Congress: Oppose Build Back Better Act's Drug Pricing Plan
This week in Congress, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform is holding hearings about the Build Back Better Act (BBBA), including a hearing on drug pricing, about which language has been inserted into the bill. The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity has written to members of the committee to express opposition to the drug pricing language, because it constitutes yet another attempt to import socialist drug pricing policies from foreign countries.
As currently included in the BBBA, the drug-pricing provisions constitute a dangerous and astoundingly selfish and shortsighted piece of legislation.
The legislation would cap prescription drug prices by importing the prices paid in a collection of foreign countries. The governments in those nations set artificially low reimbursements for medicines—in other words, they employ a heavy-handed, socialist system of drug pricing. If the drug-pricing components of the BBBA were to pass, they would have a chilling effect on the pharmaceutical industry where we would certainly see a drastic reduction in investment in biomedical research and development.