U.S. senators announce bipartisan proposal to lower drug prices

FILE PHOTO: Pharmaceutical tablets and capsules are arranged in the shape of a U.S. dollar sign on a table, August 20, 2014. REUTERS/Srdjan Zivulovic/File Photo

By Susan Cornwell and Michael Erman

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The top Republican and Democrat on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee announced a proposal to lower prescription drug prices on Tuesday that could save $100 billion in costs to government healthcare programs, and said the committee would vote on the legislation on Thursday.

The committee’s chairman, Senator Chuck Grassley, and its leading Democrat, Senator Ron Wyden, said in a statement that they have been working on the bipartisan plan to “address the broken prescription drug supply chain” for six months.

“This legislation shows that no industry is above accountability,” Grassley and Wyden said.

It is not clear how much support this, or any other drug pricing measure proposed in Congress, will receive ahead of 2020 presidential elections. But the cost of U.S. healthcare is sure to be a top campaign issue.

The proposal aims to keep drug prices down – for both Medicare patients and those in the commercial market – by forcing pharmaceutical companies to pay rebates to Medicare if they raise prices of drugs more than the rate of inflation.

Those rebates would be equal to the difference between the price increases and the inflation rate.

It also includes a cap on out-of-pocket costs for drugs covered under Medicare’s Part D, which is for self-administered prescription drugs, as well as changes to the program’s Part B, which covers physician-administered drugs.

The senators said the proposal would save taxpayers $100 billion from the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Beneficiaries would save $27 billion in out-of-pocket costs.

The Trump administration and Democrats in the House of Representatives have been working on their own plans to lower the cost of medicines for U.S. consumers.

U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has struggled to deliver on a pledge to lower drug prices before the November, 2020 election. His administration is currently working to push through a rule that would tie some Medicare drug prices to the lower prices paid in other countries.

The Trump administration earlier this month scrapped an ambitious policy that would have required health insurers to pass billions of dollars in rebates they receive from drugmakers to Medicare patients.

Also in July, a federal judge struck down a Trump administration rule that would have forced pharmaceutical companies to include the wholesale prices of their drugs in television advertising.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell in Washington and Michael Erman and Carl O’Donnell in New York; Editing by Susan Thomas, Steve Orlofsky and Bill Berkrot)

U.S. charges hundreds in major healthcare fraud, opioid crackdown

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions addresses a news conference to announce a nation-wide health care fraud and opioid enforcement action, at the Justice Department in Washington, U.S. June 28, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday announced charges against 601 people including doctors for taking part in healthcare frauds that resulted in over $2 billion in losses and contributed to the nation’s opioid epidemic in some cases.

The arrests came as part of what the department said was the largest healthcare fraud takedown in U.S. history and included 162 doctors and other suspects charged for their roles in prescribing and distributing addictive opioid painkillers.

“Some of our most trusted medical professionals look at their patients – vulnerable people suffering from addiction – and they see dollar signs,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.

The arrests came as part of an annual fraud takedown overseen by the Justice Department. The crackdown resulted in authorities bringing dozens of unrelated cases involving alleged frauds that cost government healthcare programs and insurers more than $2 billion.

Officials sought in the latest crackdown to emphasize their efforts to combat the nation’s opioid epidemic. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the epidemic caused more than 42,000 deaths from opioid overdoses in the United States in 2016.

In a report released on Thursday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General said about 460,000 patients covered by Medicare received high amounts of opioids in 2017 and 71,000 were at risk of misuse or overdose.

Those figures were slightly down from 2016, but the report said the high level of opioid use remained a concern. The report said almost 300 prescribers had “questionable prescribing” that warranted further scrutiny.

Many of the criminal cases announced on Thursday involved charges against medical professionals who authorities said had contributed to the country’s opioid epidemic by participating in the unlawful distribution of prescription painkillers.

The cases included charges in Texas against a pharmacy chain owner and two other people accused of using fraudulent prescriptions to fill bulk orders for over 1 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills that were sold to drug couriers.

“The perpetrators really are despicable and greedy people,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said at a press conference.

The Justice Department also announced other cases unrelated to opioids, including schemes to bill the government healthcare programs Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare as well as private insurers for medically unnecessary prescription drugs and compounded medications.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Tom Brown)