Obama Health Budget Calls for Authority to Negotiate Drug Prices

The Obama administration’s fiscal 2016 budget request calls for allowing the government to negotiate the price of prescription drugs and giving regulators new funding to fight Ebola. The administration—citing deep concerns with the rapidly growing prices of specialty and brand name drugs—proposes to give the HHS secretary for the first time the authority to negotiate drug prices for biologics and high-cost drugs in the Medicare Part D. That part of Medicare is one way beneficiaries get prescription drug coverage. Some drugs such as Sovaldi, a hepatitis C medication, can cost $1,000 a day.