Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and California House Representative Ro Khanna have proposed new legislation seeking to drastically reduce the price of pharmaceutical drugs in the United States.
It’s a popular goal. According to a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll released last April, 60 percent of Americans said that lowering the price of prescription drugs should be a “top priority” for Congress and the Trump administration.
The current administration’s efforts to curtail drug prices have worked to some extent. There were 57 percent fewer price increases on brand-name drugs last year compared to 2017, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
But they’re still rising.
“Some manufacturers are still in denial about whether bringing down list prices is even an important goal,” Azar said at an event by the Council for Affordable Health Coverage. “They claim that these skyrocketing prices don’t matter. But these prices do matter to patients, in a number of important ways.”