SECOND OPINION: PHARMA-BACKED REBATE RULE WOULD INCREASE OOP COSTS AND PREMIUMS FOR SENIORS — DO NOTHING TO LOWER RX PRICES

Big Pharma Claims Misguided Proposal Would Benefit Patients, Facts Show It Would Hand Drug Companies a More Than $100 Billion Bailout

During a recent POLITICO webinar “Solving America’s Drug Pricing Puzzle,” Kristen Bernie, Deputy Vice President of Policy and Research for PhRMA, claimed the misguided Rebate Rule would benefit American patients. “I would argue that the executive order to push through negotiated rebates and discounts to patients at the pharmacy counter would meaningfully lower costs for patients,” Bernie said.

But the truth is the Rebate Rule would actually increase out-of-pocket costs for Medicare Part D beneficiaries:

While doing nothing to lower out-of-control prescription drug prices:
Increasing Medicare Part D premiums:
And putting taxpayers on the hook for at least $200 billion in increased spending:
As Juliette Cubanski, Deputy Director of the Program on Medicare Policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation noted during the webinar: “[The Rebate Rule] would have had a dramatic effect in terms of increasing Medicare spending. So that’s not really where we want to go in terms of lowering drug costs for some people on the one hand but dramatically increasing Medicare spending and increasing Medicare Part D premiums for the vast majority of enrollees. That solution didn’t seem to make a lot of sense at the time and it’s interesting to see it being resurrected now.”

So why does PhRMA support the Rebate Rule and want it enacted? The Rebate Rule is a key component of Big Pharma’s blame game to evade responsibility for out-of-control drug prices, would eliminate a key negotiating step that serves as the only real check on the pharmaceutical industry’s unilateral control over prices and would hand the industry a more than $100 billion bailout.

Big Pharma must be held accountable for the industry’s price-gouging and anti-competitive tactics, including hikingprescription drug prices at the height of the pandemic — not handed a massive bailout. The administration should withdraw the misguided Rebate Rule, now.

Learn more about the misguided Rebate Rule HERE.

Read more on market-based solutions to hold Big Pharma accountable and lower prescription drug prices HERE.

Sign-up for updates

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.