President Joe Biden said prescription drug prices in the U.S. are excessively high and that his expansive tax and spending bill would help lower costs, as he prodded the Senate to pass the legislation.
“We can agree that prescription drugs are outrageously expensive in this country,” Biden said yesterday at the White House. “It doesn’t need to be that way.”
The plan, which is part of the House-passed Build Back Better Act, would follow through on Democrats’ long-standing promise to direct the federal government to negotiate Medicare drug prices and to penalize drug companies for massive price spikes.
The president described patients who had to take half their doses of medication or go without needed medications altogether because of high prices. He praised drugmakers for developing lifesaving products but said they’re gouging consumers.
“Nobody is standing up for the patients,” Biden said. “Nobody has held the manufactures accountable—until now.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a letter yesterday to Democratic senators that the bill will make its way through committees over the next two weeks and that “our goal in the Senate is to pass the legislation before Christmas and get it to the president’s desk.”
It’s not clear, though, whether that timetable is realistic. Biden wasn’t as definitive as Schumer about the timing. Asked yesterday if he expects the bill to be completed by Christmas, the president said he wants it done “as early as we can get it.”...
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