The regulation of drug prices has received significant recent bipartisan support in Congress. Democrats and Republicans in both houses have proposed approximately eighty bills relating to drug pricing over the past two years. The charts below summarize the key provisions of representative bills.1

Although the proposed price-regulating mechanisms differ from bill to bill, the bills do not indicate a clear difference in the parties' goals when viewed at a high level. Many of the proposed bills focus on price transparency as well as reporting to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Certain bills would require pharmaceutical manufacturers to provide data on, and justifications for, the pricing of certain drugs that would exceed specified price increase limits. These bills usually include penalties for reporting failures; however, they usually do not provide a procedure to lower a price that triggers the reporting provisions. Instead, they often establish or enhance public databases for the reported information, and some go as far as requiring pharmacists to communicate this information to the patient at the point of sale.

Other proposed bills would set caps on drug pricing, albeit through different approaches. Certain bills would require HHS to negotiate drug prices with the manufacturers of covered drugs, for example, and some of these bills grant HHS the power to establish a price if an agreement is not reached.

Although many bills on this topic have been proposed throughout the current legislative session, most are stalled in committee, often since their day of introduction.

There is one notable exception: on December 12, 2019, H.R. 3 passed the House, albeit almost entirely along party lines. If enacted in its current form, it would directly regulate drug prices by creating a price ceiling based on drug price averages in designated reference countries. H.R. 3 would also give the Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services (CMS) the authority to promulgate rules relating to drug price disclosures in pharmaceutical advertisements (such as the Trump Administration's recently-defeated Disclosure Rule) and would require CMS to negotiate drug prices. As a Democrat-sponsored bill, however, its fate in the current Senate is uncertain.

Regardless of the outcome of the November 2020 election, the bipartisan push for drug pricing regulation may foreshadow the passage of such legislation in the near future. We will continue to monitor Congress's efforts to regulate in this area and provide updates.

footnote

1 The charts below summarize selected drug pricing bills put forth in the 116th Congress. Although these lists are not exhaustive, they provide examples of the types of price-regulating measures under consideration. These bills were identified by searching congress.gov for the terms "drug pricing" and "drug price."

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