Former GOP Congressman Highlights Solutions to Effectively Lower Drug Prices for Americans by Rejecting Big Pharma’s Self-Serving Agenda in Townhall Op-ed

In a new Townhall op-ed, former Republican Congressman Ryan Costello urges lawmakers to support President Trump’s mandate to lower prescription drug prices by holding Big Pharma accountable — and reject big drug companies’ efforts to instead shift blame onto others in a self-serving blame game.

Costello highlights President Trump’s longstanding commitment to holding Big Pharma accountable, and how drug makers have continued to price-gouge the American people:

“‘For generations, the American people have been abused by Big Pharma.’ President Trump said those words during his first administration, and it still reins true to this day as the White House recently elevated the importance of policies to stop Americans from being forced by Big Pharma to pay the highest prescription drug prices in the world.

“While the president has repeatedly pulled back the curtain on Big Pharma, it hasn’t stopped the pharmaceutical industry from pursuing a creative approach to keeping Americans stuck with list prices 422 percent higher than in other countries.”

Costello explains how Big Pharma has attempted to dodge accountability by funneling millions into patient groups and PR campaigns designed to distract from their own price-hiking practices and take out the one check on their ability to keep prices high: pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).

“The Big Pharma agenda is designed to keep prices high, increase pricing power, undermine competition, and even break down market-based innovations like specialty pharmacies and mail order, lower-cost pharmacy options that improve health outcomes for American patients and further lower costs…This concerted effort to dismantle PBMs should paint a pretty clear picture of what PBMs actually do: negotiate against drug companies to secure savings for American patients and employers.”

PBMs have become a prime target of Big Pharma, not because they’re driving up prices, but because they successfully negotiate them down. As Costello explains:

“PBMs play a critical role in the prescription drug marketplace by using the pooled leveraging power of the health plan sponsors, such as employers, government plans and labor unions, that chose to hire them to negotiate lower net costs for brand prescription drugs. This is done through securing rebates from manufacturers that any of their clients could not secure on their own without the scale made possible by the pharmacy benefit company.”

That’s why drugmakers have tried to shift the blame for rising drug prices onto PBMs:

“If PBMs weren’t successful at securing price concessions from drug companies, drug companies wouldn’t be spending millions of dollars on advertising and funding secret patient groups to weaken them.”

“These very price concessions secured by drug companies are a common scapegoat drug companies and their lobbying, patient groups and advertising like to use to blame for high drug prices. In reality, the majority of drugs in the marketplace do not even have rebates at all and most do not see competition due to the pharmaceutical industry’s patent abuse, including a staggering 89 percent of drugs in the Medicare Part D program.”

He closes with a call to action for Republican lawmakers: stand with American consumers, not Big Pharma.

“That is why the American people need President Trump to carry out his mandate to lower prescription drug prices — and the GOP Congress to work with the White House to execute against this mandate — by recognizing the fundamental role big drug companies play as the underlying cause of high prices, and rejecting Big Pharma’s agenda meant to keep prices high.”

Read the full op-ed HERE.