“Democrats ran on lowering drug prices. Seniors and working families across the country are counting on them to keep that promise,” said one group
By Kenny Stancil
While expressing their frustration with the gutting of President Joe Biden’s agenda to tax corporations and the wealthy to fund expanded public benefits and climate action, healthcare advocates are stressing that there is still an opportunity for progressive lawmakers to fight for the inclusion of expanded Medicare benefits and lower drug prices in the Democratic Party’s not-yet-finalized reconciliation bill.
“The White House’s latest draft of the Build Back Better package is deeply flawed,” Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, said Thursday in a statement. “Not only does the draft fail to lower drug prices, it also fails to add dental and vision benefits to Medicare.”
“There’s nothing more popular with voters across the political spectrum than allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, and using the savings to expand Medicare benefits,” Lawson continued.
Surveys show that 84% of U.S. adults, including nearly nine in 10 Democrats, support the party’s proposal to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision services for tens of millions of seniors. Roughly the same percentage of voters want Medicare to be empowered to reduce the costs of medications, for which Americans pay two to four times more than people in other countries.
Pointing to the widespread, bipartisan support for such long-standing goals, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said earlier this week that “Congress must finally have the courage to stand up to the greed of Big Pharma.”
To appease a few right-wing Democratic obstructionists, however, Biden’s recently unveiled Build Back Better framework proposes slashing the previously agreed-upon 10-year spending level in half, from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion, which would result in several devastating cuts.
While drug price reform and dental and vision benefits are among the casualties for now, Lawson argued that “it’s not too late for congressional Democrats to listen to the people.”
Social Security Works urged people to tell their members of Congress that the Build Back Better Act “must include these vital priorities,” which the advocacy group said will require Democratic lawmakers to pressure the party’s conservative holdouts to “stop their sabotage.”
.@POTUS’ #BuildBackBetter framework fails to lower drug prices and fails to #ExpandMedicare to cover dental and vision.
Call your members of Congress today at 202-224-3121 and tell them the package MUST include these vital priorities. pic.twitter.com/NfIx4qZt3a
— SocialSecurityWorks (@SSWorks) October 28, 2021
Just a handful of corporate-funded Democrats are standing in the way of expanding Medicare benefits and authorizing the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices, including Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), Bob Menendez (N.J.), and Joe Manchin (W.Va.), as well as Reps. Kathleen Rice (N.Y.), Scott Peters (Calif.), and Kurt Schrader (Ore.).
“Democrats still have a huge opportunity to deliver on a promise they have been making for decades to lower drug prices,” Margarida Jorge, head of Lower Drug Prices Now, said Thursday in a statement. “They should not toss it away to accommodate Republicans and a handful of pharma-backed Democrats in the House and Senate who support Big Pharma’s interests over those of their own constituents.”
Calling it “bad policy and bad politics” to leave pharmaceutical corporations “in charge of drug prices while one-third of Americans ration or go without medicine,” Jorge added that “we urge lawmakers in Congress to amend this framework to include serious reform and keep their promise to lower drug prices.”
The lack of a new dental benefit for Medicare recipients in the Build Back Better Act is “unacceptable,” stressed the Medicare Rights Center, which said that the omission “must be addressed before either chamber of Congress votes on the bill. There is way too much need and the policy is way too popular to not cover dental in Medicare.”
Over 30 percent of seniors in West Virginia have no natural teeth: https://t.co/Ed6r9zeZcm
Why does @Sen_JoeManchin want to inflict needless pain and suffering on his own constituents? #ExpandMedicare https://t.co/7sP3DEIqWV
— SocialSecurityWorks (@SSWorks) October 26, 2021
As Common Dreams reported on Thursday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and other progressive House Democrats including Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), and Cori Bush (Mo.), have reiterated that they will not vote for the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill without seeing the final legislative text of the Build Back Better Act and without assurances that it will pass the Senate.
That strategy was endorsed by Sanders and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who tweeted Thursday that “the point of this two-track process was to have both the infrastructure bill and investments in America’s families and our climate pass together.”
“Details matter,” Merkley added, “and House Progressives are right to take the time to make sure we fully deliver for the American people.”
Sanders, meanwhile, has pledged to keep fighting to get vision care, dental care, and lower drug prices into the social welfare and climate package, which can be passed through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process but only with the support of all 50 Senate Democrats and all but three House Democrats.
Biden’s current Build Back Better framework has “major gaps in it,” Sanders told The Hill on Thursday, adding that “the American people are very, very clear that they’re sick and tired of paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.”
Vowing to strengthen the bill, Sanders said that “we have got to move forward to dental, as well as eyeglasses and the cost of prescription drugs.”
And Sanders may not be alone. According to Politico reporter Alice Miranda Ollstein, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Thursday insisted that “drug pricing will be in the final bill, despite its exclusion” from the current framework. Echoing Sanders’ message from earlier this week, Wyden reportedly called the provision “non-negotiable.”
Wyden “is absolutely right,” said Social Security Works. “Democrats ran on lowering drug prices. Seniors and working families across the country are counting on them to keep that promise” in the Build Back Better Act.
Senator @RonWyden is absolutely right.
Democrats ran on lowering drug prices. Seniors and working families across the country are counting on them to keep that promise in #BuildBackBetter. https://t.co/PD56RpQKAn
— SocialSecurityWorks (@SSWorks) October 28, 2021
Politico reported Thursday that Wyden hopes Democrats can “still find a way to address rising prescription drug costs but acknowledged the power the industry has shown so far to prevent even modest changes.”
“Pharma is everywhere,” said Wyden. “They have got more lobbyists than anybody.”
As Common Dreams reported last month, Big Pharma and private health insurers spent $171 million on lobbying through the first nine months of the year, the most of any industry.
According to Politico:
“The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, did spend more than any other healthcare group trying to shape the legislative package. But other deep-pocketed players—from the nation’s biggest insurance companies to dental practices—are also poised to secure significant victories while dodging threats to their bottom lines.
Congress is poised to extend federal subsidies to buy Obamacare coverage until 2025, a provision favored by big insurers that sell plans on the individual market. Democrats are also set to subsidize private coverage for roughly two million low-income people in states that refused to expand Medicaid rather than create a new Medicaid-like program—another boon for health plans and medical providers who earn far more in the private insurance market than they do from Medicaid. Democrats’ promise to provide dental coverage to all seniors on Medicare was also scuttled after insurance companies and the dental industry lobbied against it, and a nascent effort to claw back government payments from privately run Medicare Advantage plans was similarly abandoned.”
Researchers from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) called it “deeply disappointing that the framework does not include any language on negotiating drug prices.”
“The public pays for drug research, and federal law gives the pharmaceutical industry patent monopolies on the products produced with this publicly funded research,” said the group of political economists. “The industry should not be allowed to charge whatever it wants for drugs that are needed for people’s lives or health.”
Jorge from Lower Drug Prices Now said that “letting Big Pharma keep their monopoly power to price-gouge patients on everything from insulin to cancer drugs means that millions of Americans continue to face tough choices between putting food on their table and taking the prescriptions they need to stay alive.”
“To build back better,” she added, “lawmakers must stand up to Big Pharma, rather than protect the status quo that enables drug corporations to continue making massive profits while workers, employers, and patients struggle to get access to affordable medicines.”
Published at www.commondreams.org
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