The format was familiar: Seven CEOs sit in front of a Senate Committee probing their industry’s business practices.
But, whereas a Congressional hearing a decade ago marked a key moment in what was a costly public reckoning for the tobacco industry, today’s hearing produced little more than a consensus among Senators that drug pricing is complicated. It is still likely that Congress and the White House will eventually move to constrain drug prices somehow, but it is clear from today’s hearing that “eventually” is far, far away.
Senate Committee chair Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has previously pushed legislation to do away with techniques that drug companies use to stave off competition from generics, and that remains a good candidate for a first legislative move in this area. Then, there is the idea to enable the Federal government to negotiate drug prices for the Veterans Administration, Medicare, and Medicaid. But the proceedings did not generate much action.
For their part, drug company officials stuck to their position that drug companies are not the source of higher drug prices. They blamed incentives elsewhere in the healthcare sector for pushing drug prices higher. The drug company officials trotted out their well-rehearsed argument that rebates paid to pharmacy-benefit management companies were a big part of the problem.
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