ch: Our Values in Action

Ideas: Prescription Drugs

Today is the deadline for seniors to sign-up for Medicare Part D, the Bush administration’s prescription drug plan which has confused seniors and experienced numerous start-up pains. Seniors who do not sign-up by today will potentially lose drug coverage for the rest of 2006, notes Paul Krugman in a column in today’s NY Times. In calling the program a “debacle,” he observed there were initially only 300 customer service representatives to help nearly 43 million Medicare recipients.

In this context, it’s time for another edition of ‘Democratic Ideas’ with someone who’s not actually a Democrat – Independent Representative Bernie Sanders of Vermont. In the great northeast, the Vermont legislature approved a bi-partisan bill that would allow seniors to purchase their prescription drugs from Canada, where prices are cheaper. Their federal Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), an endorsed candidate of Midwest Values PAC, was one of the first members of Congress to help seniors get access to affordable drugs in Canada. How can we reduce the costs of prescription drugs?

There is a better way. I have introduced the Medical Innovation Prize Fund Act (H.R. 417) to address this situation. This legislation would change the paradigm for financing medical R&D and pricing prescription drugs in the United States, ensuring that we increase innovation and decrease costs for presctiption drugs at the same time.

Rather than rely on high drug prices as the incentive for R&D, the bill would directly reward developers of medicines, on the basis of a drug’s incremental therapeutic benefit to consumers, through a new $60 billion Medical Innovation Prize Fund. Prices for prescription drugs to consumers would be at low generic prices immediately upon entry to the market. […]

Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed strong legislation to allow American individuals, pharmacists and whoelsalers to buy their prescription drugs from 26 well-regualted countries. Right now, the Senate has the task of passing its own bill so that Congress can put something real on the President’s desk this year. The good news is that Sens. Dorgan (D-N.D.), Snowe (R-Maine), Stabenow (D-Mich.), McCain (R-Ariz.), Daschle (D-S.D.), Lott (R-Miss.) and Kennedy (D-Mass.), among others, have come together to sponsor a very strong bi-partisan reimportation bill. While this legislation is narrower than the House-passed bill, in that it is limited to imports from Canada for the first year, it is a very thorough and sensible bill that should be passed – and there appears to be a real prospect for its passage this year.

But we’ve been close before, only to be disappointed in the end. The tentacles of the drug giants reach far and deep, penetrating conference committees and last-minute negotiations so that what comes out is, quite often, counterfeit. In 2000, the drug giants slipped some crafty loopholes into the MEDS Act that rendered the bill dead on arrival by the time it was signed into law. Since then, they have spared no expense and betrayed no sense of shame to fight off every attempt to correct those loopholes and fulfill the will of Congress and the American people. If a strong Senate bill is passed, the American people and their representatives in Congress must demand that the leadership in both Houses sees that a bill gets to the President’s desk this year.