Rx Drugs

Outgoing FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb suggested Congress consider establishing incentives, including market exclusivity, to help drive development of safer pain medications.

The House passed Monday (March 25) legislation to stop drug companies from avoiding Medicaid rebates by misclassifying brand drugs as generics, but the bill could face opposition in the Senate even though the upper chamber's original Right Rebate Act was bipartisan.

Senate health committee chair Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said Thursday (March 28) that he is working with health committee ranking Democrat Patty Murray (WA), Senate Finance Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and ranking Democrat Ron Wyden (OR) to develop a bill in each committee to lower health care costs by summer.

House Energy & Commerce oversight and investigations subcommittee Chair Diana DeGette (D-CO) said Tuesday (March 26) that she has no plans to hold oversight hearings on the 340B drug discount program.

House Democrats repeatedly asked how the Trump administration would meet its goals of eradicating new HIV transmissions by 2030 if the proposed budget would cut $1.3 trillion from the Medicaid program.

The Energy & Commerce health subcommittee is scheduled to mark up Wednesday (March 27) a dozen health care bills, half of which are drug pricing bills and half of which would undo changes Republicans made to the Affordable Care Act.

White House officials are talking with staff for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) about drug-pricing legislation that could be included in a spending bill this fall, while Senate Finance Committee staff gear up to write a drug- pricing bill they hope could pass this summer, sources following the machinations of drug pricing legislation say.

A prominent consumer advocacy group and an FDA advisory committee chair filed a citizen petition on Thursday (March 21) demanding FDA slap an immediate moratorium on the approval of new opioids until it revamps its regulation and review of new opioids as recommended by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2017.

Outgoing FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb on Tuesday (March 19) blamed insurers and pharmacy benefit managers for slower biosimilar uptake in the United States than in Europe.