Grassley: 'Secrecy' on high drug prices must end
Big pharma executives were grilled on Capitol Hill by the Senate Finance Committee last week over the increase in drug prices.
Following the hearing, drug company Eli Lilly announced it will start offering a half-price version of insulin. While this was a first step on the issue, many drug companies still charge high prices for their products.
Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) told FOX Business that more transparency is needed to hold these companies accountable.
"In Europe they don't pay for our research and we should be making them pay for our research,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said on "Bulls & Bears" on Wednesday. "We have high drug prices, why? Because there's so much secrecy. There's middle-people called pharmacy benefit managers that rake a little bit off of about $170 billion."
Grassley said he's introduced two resolutions to combat high prices and give power back to the consumers.
"One with [Senator] Klobuchar (D-MN) to do away with the "pay-for-delay" that keeps generics off the markets a little longer." Grassley explained. "No. 2 is with [Senator] Leahy, goes by the acronym CREATES, that we got out of committee last year."
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The Trump administration has made lowering drug prices one of its top priorities.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar told FOX Business last month that President Trump’s new pharmacy rebate rule will be implemented at the start of 2020.
“The president’s proposal will completely change how drug prices are done at the pharmacy level," he told Maria Bartiromo. “We should see list prices go down and tens of billions of dollars of savings to American citizens when they walk into the pharmacy.”