A health policy group led by two former Trump administration officials argued in a memo Wednesday that the Biden White House’s efforts to negotiate drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries are causing more harm than good.
The Health Market and Policy Network issued a memo first obtained by The Hill the day before the Biden White House supposedly detail the savings achieved in early Medicare negotiations on the price of 10 prescription drugs.
“We understand the temptation to see this as a victory. But the evidence continues to mount that there is no such thing as a free lunch,” the memo states.
The group is led by Joe Grogan, who previously ran the Domestic Policy Council in the Trump White House, and John Czwartacki, a former aide at the Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Democrats in 2022 passed the Reducing Inflation Act, a sweeping climate and health care law that, among other things, gave the federal government the ability to negotiate with drug manufacturers over the price of prescription drugs for people. Medicare beneficiaries. The White House touted these provisions as a major cost-saving effort for seniors.
“The cost of price controls is high and the effects of the program are backfiring on all of us,” states the memo from the Health Market and Policy Network. The group called for bipartisan solutions to the Inflation Reduction Act “before more harm comes to seniors.”
THE memo cites projections from the Center for American Progress that the program would save billions, a number the Health Market and Policy Network called misleading.
The group also argued that the rising cost of coverage has caused some plans to leave the market, leaving seniors with fewer options. The memo cites a decision by the Mutual of Omaha Rx is leaving the Medicare prescription drug plan market at the end of 2024, which the group attributed to the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act.
The Health Market and Policy Network also pointed to a study showing a decrease in clinical trial initiations in 2023 compared to 2022 and 2021, although much of the decline was attributed to a drop in COVID-19 trials.
Medicare will eventually be able to negotiate the prices of 20 drugs under the Inflation Reduction Act, but President Biden, in his State of the Union address earlier this year, proposed expanding that number to 50 and bringing in more drugs to the program early.
The Inflation Reduction Act also requires pharmaceutical companies to pay rebates to Medicare when prices rise faster than the inflation rate for certain drugs. Health authorities then adjust the cost of medications that qualify for savings under the program.
Although the law was comprehensive, many of its key health provisions apply only to Medicare and not to the commercial market, because Democrats had to scale it back to pass it in the Senate.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
