The Biden administration Thursday announced five new measures that seek to lower health care costs by promoting competition.
Reducing health care prices is one of President Joe Biden’s key platforms as he seeks to build momentum in the 2024 presidential campaign. The president has repeatedly pointed to the steps he and congressional Democrats have already taken, including allowing Medicare to negotiate certain drug prices for the first time and capping the cost of insulin at $35 per month. However, few Americans are aware of these provisions, a recent KFF poll shows.
The measures announced Thursday, which are largely incremental, seek to counter the power and practices of big health care companies.
The Commerce and Health and Human Services departments released a proposed framework for agencies concerning the exercise of march-in rights, which enable the federal government to license drugs or inventions backed by taxpayer funds to other parties if the invention is not made accessible to the public. The proposed framework specifies for the first time that price can be a factor in determining the accessibility of a taxpayer-funded drug or other invention.
The government has never used its march-in authority, which was enabled by the Bayh-Dole Act.
“Fundamentally, we are establishing that price can now be a factor in determining when the federal government can march in to ensure that we have lower prices,” Neera Tanden, the White House domestic policy adviser, told reporters.
Certain Democratic lawmakers have pushed for greater use of march-in rights to counter high drug prices. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a leading proponent, praised the administration’s effort.
“President Biden is taking a critical and much-needed step to lower costs and rein in the abuses of the pharmaceutical industry, which has raked in billions of dollars by jacking up prices for drugs that taxpayers paid to develop,” she said in a statement. “Today’s…
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