martes, 5 de marzo de 2019

Senate Aging gets back on the drug pricing bandwagon

D.C. Diagnosis
Nicholas Florko

Senate Aging gets back on the drug pricing bandwagon 

The Senate Aging Committee will hold two days of hearings this week on drug pricing. The committee, headed by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.), will hear on Wednesday from five patients, all of whom have experience with struggling to afford prescription drugs. On Thursday, the committee will hear from a panel of experts.

It’ll be interesting to see whether that committee — which actually has no formal legislative authority — once again begins shaping the debate over drug pricing. Until she lost her seat last fall, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) frequently used her position on the committee to investigate failures in the drug pricing system. Issues like the high cost of insulin, how hedge funds jack up the price of old off-patent drugs, and so-called gag clauses were all first broached in earnest by the Senate Aging Committee.

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