Thursday, October 24, 2019
Neal has received over
$670,000 in campaign cash from pharmaceutical companies since 2007, according
to Kaiser Health News
Following the lead of pharma-friendly Rep.
Richard Neal, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee this week crushed
several progressive amendments to a House drug pricing bill that would have
expanded the number of medicines covered by the legislation and extended lower
costs to the nation's tens of millions of uninsured.
The Intercept reported Wednesday
that Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee, warned his Democratic colleagues against offering any amendments to
the Lower
Drug Costs Now Act of 2019 (H.R. 3) during the committee's markup of
the legislation on Tuesday.
"We intend to stick with
the measure in front of us," Neal told The
Hill.
But Rep. Lloyd Doggett
(D-Texas), the author of a more ambitious
drug pricing bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in April brushed
aside in favor of the more moderate H.R. 3, introduced amendments
anyway during the marathon hearing.
If adopted, Doggett's
amendments would have raised the minimum number of drugs the government would
be required to negotiate under the legislation from 35 to 50 and guaranteed
that the approximately 30 million people without health insurance in the U.S.
would benefit from the lower negotiated rates.
"The chances that the
typical patient will see their prices lowered are akin to winning the
lottery," Doggett said. "Is it so burdensome to ask that a few more
drugs be done? No, it's not."
Despite Doggett's plea, most
House Democrats on the committee followed Neal's lead in rejecting the
amendments. The legislation passed out of the Ways and Means Committee late
Tuesday by a vote
of 24-7-1, with Doggett the lone member voting present.
Under the current version of
H.R. 3, it would take the government over 100 years to negotiate lower prices
for all of the prescription drugs covered by Medicare, Doggett said in a document summarizing
his issues with the bill.
"My objective is not to
let the perfect get in the way of the good, but to ensure that the good we seek
actually reaches those whom we serve," Doggett wrote in a Dear
Colleague letter (pdf)
in September. "In short, more work and amendments are needed to make H.R.
3 effective in achieving our shared objective of lowering drug prices for
American families."
The Intercept's Aída Chavez
reported that Neal "is one of the biggest beneficiaries" of campaign
cash from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.
"According to Kaiser
Health News," Chavez noted, "he's received $670,100 in campaign
contributions from pharmaceutical companies since 2007."
Chavez's colleague Ryan Grim
was among those noting that Neal is currently facing a primary
challenge from his left flank:
Donald Shaw, reporter with the
investigative outlet Sludge, highlighted the slew of major pharmaceutical
companies that have donated to Neal just this year:
As Common Dreams reported in
June, progressives accused Pelosi of cutting them out of negotiations over the
details of H.R. 3 and warned the bill would be far too soft on the
pharmaceutical industry.
"If we don't address this
in a big and bold way, a lot of us should go home and start knitting,"
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive
Caucus, told reporters
at the time.
Progressives were ultimately
able to win
minor concessions from leadership, such as raising from 25 to 35 the
minimum number of drugs the government must negotiate under the bill.
When Pelosi finally unveiled
the H.R. 3 in September, advocacy groups cautiously
applauded the measure but said improvements would be necessary to make
a significant dent in soaring drug prices.
"Fundamentally, high
medicine prices are rooted in the monopoly powers our government grants to
prescription drug corporations," Peter Maybarduk, director of Public
Citizen's Access to Medicines Program, said in a statement.
"Making medicine affordable for everyone requires that we challenge this
power."
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