The US Government Has the Power to Lower Drug Costs
The American people are now paying the highest prices for medicines that they paid to help develop. Congress and the president have the power to change this — but in the past few decades, thanks to intense drug industry lobbying, they have refused to.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), then chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, presides over a hearing on prescription drug costs at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on February 8, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)
Democratic senator (and possible 2028 presidential candidate) Jon Ossoff has a solid video out explaining the link between legalized political corruption and high drug prices — and touting his work to end the ban on Medicare negotiating lower rates on a handful of medicines. That was long-overdue legislation, and now it’s time to go much further and do something that’s also long overdue: reinstate the drug pricing rule imposed by Republican President George H. W. Bush’s administration.
In 1989, Bush’s National Institutes of Health asserted the power to require that medicines developed at taxpayer expense be offered to American taxpayers at a “reasonable” price. The idea was common sense: if the public spent money to help develop a drug, the public’s return on such investment should be affordable prices for that drug.
Six years later, however, the Clinton administration bowed to pharmaceutical industry lobbying and rescinded the rule.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.