Hillary Clinton will launch a broadside against the pharmaceutical industry
on Tuesday, rolling out an aggressive plan to drive down prescription drug
costs, a populist health care issue largely unconnected with Obamacare that
Democrats want to position front and center in 2016.
At a campaign event in Iowa, Clinton will unveil a set of proposals that her
campaign says will save well over $100 billion over 10 years — taking those
savings mostly from the drug industry but targeting insurers as well.
In a speeches in Louisiana and Arkansas on Monday, Clinton defended
Obamacare, urged states to expand Medicaid andsaid it was time for
Republicans to stop vowing to repeal a law that's covering millions. She also
briefly previewed her forthcoming salvo on drug costs.
“It is time to deal with skyrocketing out-of-pocket costs and runaway
prescription drug prices,” she said. She referred to a Sunday New York Times
report on how a 62-year-old medicine jumped from $13.50 a pill to $750 after a
company bought it last month. She added: “Nobody in America should have to
choose between buying their medicine and paying their rent.”
Recent polls have found that high drugs costs are the No. 1 health care
priority of Americans, eclipsing Obamacare even among Republicans and
independents. Clinton follows her chief rival for the Democratic nomination,
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who released a similar plan earlier this month. New drugs
with high price tags — like $14,000 a month cholesterol drugs and $100,000-plus
cancer treatments — have caught the public's attention.
One of her ideas would target insurers, setting a monthly limit of $250 on
out-of-pocket costs for covered drugs, as has been done already in Maine and for
Obamacare exchange plans in California. Clinton’s policies also include some
that the Obama administration has repeatedly pushed but have fallen flat on
Capitol Hill, like lowering the monopoly marketing period for a costly new class
of drugs called biologics from 12 to seven years.
Like most Democrats, including Sanders, Clinton calls for empowering Medicare
to leverage its massive negotiating power to lower prices for seniors. That's an
idea that's been around since the Medicare drug law passed early in the George
W. Bush administration, but the GOP has consistently opposed it.
Clinton and Sanders would let Americans re-import drugs from other countries,
where they are often sold at half the price. And they would outlaw so-called
pay-for-delay settlements in patent litigation in which brand name companies pay
their generic competitors to hold off on marketing a cheaper copycat drug.
Clinton would require deeper rebates on drugs for low-income people on the
Medicare program — the same provided to those on Medicaid. That's the source of
the estimated $100 billion in savings.
Clinton’s plan includes some less familiar proposals as well, which were
aired last week in a policy paper by the liberal Center for American Progress.
Those include requiring companies that benefit from federal spending on basic
research, such as through NIH, to spend a certain amount on research and
development.
That's fashioned after an Obamacare requirement that insurers spend a fixed
percentage of the premiums they collect on medical care, or else pay rebates to
consumers. The think tank last week also recommended giving an independent
organization the authority to assess how a new drug compares to existing
treatments, and recommend a price range to help insurers negotiate. Clinton is
backing a similar proposal.