Cramer Pushes Back Against Controlling Drug Prices

Williston ND, (KEYZ)  - In the partisan Inflation Reduction Act, Senator Kevin Cramer joined Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee Mike Crapo (R-ID) in voicing opposition to the establishment of a permanent government program for setting pharmaceutical drug prices, funded by billions of taxpayer dollars, and raising doubts about the program's implementation strategies.

The Senators urged the officials to consider the effects on health care access, research and development, and domestic manufacturing in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chiquita Brooks-LaSure. The letter also highlights potential risks the upcoming government pricing initiative poses for patients, frontline healthcare providers, small businesses, and the American economy as a whole.

“As the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has confirmed, the government price controls codified under the recently enacted reconciliation legislation have the potential to increase launch prices for new medications, as well as to trigger fewer new drug approvals in the coming years… Other independent analyses have projected even more catastrophic consequences, from hundreds of thousands of domestic job losses to hundreds of billions in forgone R&D dollars. The innovation ecosystem that has made the United States the world’s unquestioned life sciences leader, bolstered by thousands of startups and small businesses, may wither under this partisan legislation, particularly in the absence of careful, deliberative implementation and assertive, consumer-oriented oversight,” wrote the senators in their letter.

In addition to Senators Cramer and Crapo, the letter is signed by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), John Thune (R-SD), Richard Burr (R-NC), Rob Portman (R-OH), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Tim Scott (R-SC), James Lankford (R-OK), Steve Daines (R-MT), Todd Young (R-IN), John Barrasso (R-WY), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Rick Scott (R-FL), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Rand Paul (R-KY), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mitt Romney (R-UT), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), John Boozman (R-AR), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV).