New polling shows that lowering the price of prescription drugs is the most popular provision of President Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan that is being debated in Congress right now. That’s not surprising given that half of all adults take at least one prescription medicine, and that people of all ages are struggling with prices. One-third of people who need prescriptions don’t take them according to their doctors’ directions because they can’t afford the cost — despite having insurance coverage. Even a just-released poll from PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) that found 41% of Americans skip prescription doses agrees.
Lowering prescription drug prices for patients, seniors, working families and employers through negotiations in Medicare is not a controversial issue. In fact, almost everyone supports this solution, particularly since we already have negotiated prices in the Department of Veterans Health and in Medicaid, programs that pay half what Medicare pays for prescriptions because of negotiations.
Lowering costs for millions of people
The prescription drug provisions of “Build Back Better” would not just lower prices in Medicare, but also extend those discounts to the 180 million people who have private insurance so that they could also save. Moreover, the legislation would limit out-of-pocket costs for seniors in Medicare who currently have no cap on costs and would stop drug corporations from charging Americans three times more for medicines than people in other countries pay for the same medicine.
No wonder it’s popular.
Lowering drug prices, like so many other health care issues, brings people together. No matter where you live, what you look like, or what kind of coverage you have, at some point, we’re all going to need medicines to feel better or recover from an illness. It’s time for Congress to make sure we’ll be able to get them.
In the past, New Jerseyans could always count on our senator, Bob Menendez, to stand up for health care. Our organization, New Jersey Citizen Action, has worked with Sen. Menendez on countless health care efforts — from protecting Medicare and Medicaid to expanding children’s health care under CHIP or the landmark passage to the Affordable Care Act that brought the number of uninsured New Jerseyans to historic lows.
But when it comes to lowering the price of prescription drugs, Sen. Menendez appears to have sided with drug corporations. Rather than working with advocates, unions, and employers to ensure that we get real reform that will lower drug prices for as many New Jerseyans as possible, he appears to be opposing reform or working to limit it.
Massive profits
Let’s be clear: New Jerseyans know the difference between real reform and tinkering. Bare minimum negotiations that are designed to protect Big Pharma’s business model will only shift costs to people under 65 to make up for the profits drug corporations lose by negotiating lower prices for seniors.
Let’s not make prescription-drug savings a shell game for drug corporations that already make more profit than any other sector in America. Drug corporations could lose $1 trillion in sales and still be the most profitable industry, so they don’t need more loopholes or encouragement to make money off of one group at the expense of another.
Choosing to lower drug prices for 48 million seniors in Medicare Part D, while letting drug corporations continue to price gouge the 180 million people who have private coverage is not a good deal for America. Sen. Menendez has worked in the past to help working families, businesses and unions. But the stakeholders that benefit most from this kind of small-potatoes reform are the drug corporations since they can hold onto their monopoly control over prices, continuing to price gouge people with employer coverage, ACA plans and union insurance to boost their profits.
It’s discouraging to see Sen. Menendez is on the wrong side of this fight rather than leading the charge for more affordable, accessible health care for all — as we’ve seen him do in the past. It’s a betrayal of his legacy on health care that constituents won’t soon forget.
Since we’ll all have to live with the consequences of his decision to put pharma’s interests over affordable medicines for the rest of us, everyone should contact Sen. Menendez and urge him to stand with us.