Obamacare has played well for Republicans in recent elections, but Democrats may have seized on a different winning healthcare issue for 2016: drug prices.
Democratic lawmakers are ramping up pressure on Republicans to dig into why some pharmaceutical companies are jacking up the prices of some drugs, with top House Oversight Committee Democrat Elijah Cummings announcing Wednesday a new drug pricing task force.
For the last few months, Cummings has asked Republican committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz to hold hearings on the matter. Democrats amped up their game on Wednesday, urging the chairman to issue subpoenas and schedule hearings with top executives of drug companies responsible for the increases.
“Instead of setting a new record on Obamacare assaults, this Congress ought to be looking at record drug prices,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas.
Focusing on high drug prices could put Democrats in a good position politically next year as a large majority of voters, including Republicans, list it as their top healthcare concern — well above Obamacare. In a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 77 percent of Americans overall and 73 percent of Republicans said making drugs affordable should be the top priority.
The issue potentially puts Republicans in a tough spot. They generally oppose government action to bring the price of drugs down and have said little about the price hikes even as Democrats, including presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have ramped up their focus.
That could leave the GOP looking as though it has no good policy solutions to an issue that’s troubling to consumers.
“I think they’re in a really bad spot because the angst over drug prices is a big issue,” said Scott Gottlieb, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and former official at the Food and Drug Administration. “It resonates with consumers and I think the Republicans need to have legislative ideas about how they’re going to directly address this.”
A Chaffetz spokeswoman told the Washington Examiner that the committee hasn’t scheduled any hearings on drug prices. Asked whether Republicans have anything in the works, Rep. Joe Pitts, chairman of the Energy and Commerce health subcommittee, said “there’s nothing scheduled.”
“We’re concerned about that,” Pitts said. “But are you talking about Part D? Look at Part D, they’ve got a pretty good record with Part D premiums.”
Pitts was referring to Medicare’s prescription drug program, which provides nearly 40 million seniors with coverage by subsidizing participating private insurance plans. Passed under President George W. Bush in 2003, the program is popular among voters.
But particular rules that guide the program are controversial among lawmakers, making it questionable whether there’s any realistic room for bipartisan policies pushing drug prices downward.
Unlike other government drug programs, such as the one administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs, federal law prohibits Medicare from negotiating with drug makers for lower prices. The program that covers millions of seniors is also prohibited from setting prices and requiring participating insurers to cover a list of certain drugs, called a formulary.
Republicans say that by simply bidding against each other to participate in Part D, insurers already have plenty of incentive to lower costs by negotiating with manufacturers for drug discounts. Allowing Medicare to negotiate prices amounts to government price-fixing, they say.
“I don’t think there are ideas on the Republican side to directly try to manage pricing the same as on the Democratic side,” Gottlieb said.
Republicans instead focus on reforming the FDA by removing barriers to drug approvals that pose large costs to manufacturers. Some recently expressed interest in speeding up the approval process for generic drugs to introduce more competition.
But Democrats are likely to insist on some form of Part D negotiations, saying it would lower prices for everyone since Medicare is by far the country’s largest payer for drugs.
“Republicans blocked Medicare’s ability to negotiate lower prescription drug costs back in 2003,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra. “Now Americans all over the country are paying the price.”
“I think there has to be some negotiation on prices,” said Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., laughing when asked whether there are some areas of common ground with Republicans.
That’s virtually a nonstarter for Republicans.
Congress already tried and failed to pass such a policy. In 2007, House Democrats (joined by 24 Republicans) passed a bill to open up Medicare drug price negotiation for the first time. But the Senate GOP blocked it, arguing that insurers are already obtaining large discounts for their customers.
Over the summer, the House passed a broadly bipartisan bill focused on speeding up the discovery, development and approval of new medical cures, although it is broadly agreed that it would do little to help lower drug prices. Doggett expressed hope it might have lit a bipartisan spark for addressing drug prices.
“I thought overall the bill was a real advance and hopefully some of the same spirit that brought people together on that will bring them together to address accessibility,” he said.
But there’s also the uneven political support by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, drug companies’ trade association. In the 2014 election cycle, PhRMA gave $80,600 to Democrats but $120,050 to Republicans, according to the website Open Secrets.
Rep. Sander Levin, leading Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee with large jurisdiction over healthcare, shrugged off the potential influence on Republicans when asked whether he can find any common policy ground with them.
“No matter how much there is in donations, there’s much more in terms of the agony when people talk to us about healthcare costs,” Levin said. “I think more and more it’s impossible to ignore the impact individually, so I think that reality is becoming the number one reality.”
