Public Disclosure of Drug Discounts and Real-Time Beneficiary Drug Cost Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. CARTER of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I rise to speak in support of H.R. 2115, the Public Disclosure of Drug Discounts Act. I am very glad to see this bill, which was part of the METRIC Act Representative Schakowsky and I passed out of Energy and Commerce, being moved through the House floor. This is important legislation that brings desperately needed transparency to our drug supply chain.
So much of the debate around how we can lower drug prices in this country has been focused on drug manufacturers. This bill highlights the need for reforms throughout our entire drug supply system. Specifically, this bill shines a spotlight on the middlemen in our drug supply chain: the pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs.
For context, three PBMs control almost 80 percent of the marketplace, and while originally designed to primarily process claims data, these companies are now some of the largest corporations in the country. For the year 2019, the major PBM companies had a higher projected revenue than Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google combined.
Again, for this year, 2019, the major PBM companies had a higher projected revenue than Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google combined.
In a time where patients are facing higher and higher drug costs, it is clear that more transparency of these middlemen is desperately needed, at the very least. This bill, H.R. 2115, will require PBMs to report information on all of the rebates, fees, and discounts they extract before a drug ever reaches patients.
PBMs argue that it is actually better for patients that the PBMs extract all of these increasingly high rebates and fees because they pass those discounts on to the insurance plans to lower premiums.
While I completely disagree with that premise, this bill will finally allow all of us to see for ourselves exactly how much of a cut these middlemen are taking out of the system.
Transparency is absolutely critical if we are going to lower drug prices for patients, and this bill is a big step in the right direction.
I applaud Representatives Spanberger, Arrington, and Boyle for their leadership on this bill, as well as my Energy and Commerce counterpart, Congresswoman Schakowsky.
Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 2115.
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