Sanders, Cassidy will mark up drug pricing payments subsequent week

The Senate Committee on Well being, Schooling, Labor and Pensions (HELP) will maintain a bipartisan markup subsequent week on laws to decrease drug costs, committee leaders introduced Tuesday.

The Might 2 markup will embrace payments on growing competitors for generic medicine, pharmacy profit supervisor (PBM) business transparency, and entry to remedies for uncommon illness sufferers.

The markup reveals that there’s nonetheless a path ahead for bipartisan work on decreasing prescription drug costs that might cross the Senate. PBMs particularly are dealing with stress from a number of angles.

The HELP committee payments may very well be mixed with a bipartisan PBM invoice sponsored by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) from the Senate Commerce Committee, in addition to laws capping the out of pocket value of insulin at $35 for everybody with personal insurance coverage.

However it’s nonetheless unclear that even with some bipartisan assist, there could be sufficient Republicans who would vote in favor to get the wanted 60 votes within the Senate.

It’s additionally unclear if the GOP-controlled Home would have an curiosity in taking over the laws, particularly if it contains insulin caps. However there was some bipartisan curiosity in drug pricing proposals within the Home, particularly these centered on PBMS.