Empower Medicare to Negotiate Drug Prices

Floor Speech

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Mr. AUCHINCLOSS. Madam Speaker, I stand for patients and taxpayers in support of empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices and to pass on the savings to lower out-of-pocket costs. We must seize this once-in-a- generation opportunity to make healthcare affordable and to promote the development of new cures.

Some policymakers have argued that lowering costs and sustaining biomedical R&D are an either/or proposition, that Medicare negotiation for all drugs in parts B and D must necessarily degrade innovation. I disagree. Cracking down on exploitations of exclusivity with thoughtful policy could turbocharge new therapeutics and lower the price of old ones with the effect of lowering out-of-pocket costs for patients, promoting high-impact science, and saving the government money that Congress can use to expand health insurance for low-income Americans and senior citizens.

That policy is within reach, and I strongly support meaningful Medicare negotiation in the Build Back Better agenda.

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