The White House on Tuesday bashed House Republicans for pursuing "handouts" for pharmaceutical companies to highlight its announcement of the first 10 drugs chosen for Medicare price negotiation under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
“[A]s the Biden Administration takes these newest historic actions to lower drug costs for Americans and strengthen Medicare, congressional Republicans continue to side with Big Pharma’s price gouging and cuts to Medicare benefits instead,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates wrote in a memo.
“Not only do congressional Republicans want to take the new benefits being announced today away from Americans with repeal legislation — they are even siding with Big Pharma’s lawsuits to stop them in their tracks,” he wrote.
The drugs, announced Tuesday by the White House, were chosen based on their eligibility under the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden signed into law in a year ago. They account for $50.5 billion in total gross Medicare Part D costs.
Negotiations over these drugs will take place in 2023 and 2024, and drugmakers have until Oct. 1 to sign agreements, according to the law. However, industry groups are seeking an injunction by that date amid various legal efforts to block the law entirely. Even if it goes forward as planned, actual savings would not kick in until 2026.
In his memo, Bates noted that Republicans have floated trying to repeal Biden’s plan to let Medicare negotiate lower drug costs, pointing to the 2022 midterms when some Republicans said an agenda item would be to claw back the law.
He said doing so would benefit only big pharmaceutical companies and contrasted the GOP economic agenda to Biden’s economic agenda, dubbed Bidenomics.
“The handouts congressional Republicans are pursuing for Big Pharma would explode our deficit, weaken Medicare, and subject more American seniors and families to price gouging for life-saving medicines,” Bates wrote.
“Across the board, the hallmark of congressional Republicans’ trickle-down economic agenda is to increase costs and financial burdens shouldered by hardworking Americans in exchange for welfare payoffs to the super rich and multinational corporations. In this case, Big Pharma.”
“We should be bolstering Medicare’s ability to lower drug costs for families, instead of trying to erase them,” he added.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), among the GOP critics of the drug negotiations, said in a hearing in June the plan is “an unconstitutional taking” and it will likely face challenges in the courts, in light of a Merck lawsuit against the drug pricing provision.
Ahead of the midterm elections, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said repealing the law could be a GOP agenda item “because those drug provisions are so dangerous, by discouraging investment in life-saving cures,” Axios reported at the time.
Later Tuesday, Biden is expected to give a speech to mark the selection of the drugs.
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