Does President J🦋oe Biden actually care about lowering prescription-drug cost𒁏s?
In a speech last week in Las Vegas, he touted his efforts to make prescription drugs mo𓆏re affordable, mostly th♓rough federal coercion and 🐠threats to pharmaceutical companies.
Yet the president is simultaneously refusing to implement🃏 a Trump-era rule that would help lower prices fairly, using the p♚ower of the free market.
Our organization will file a la🍸wsuit Thu𓃲rsday asking the federal courts to force the Biden administration to follow the law and give Americans real relief on prescription-drug prices.
The rule, issued in November 2020, requires heal💧th-insurance companies to🃏 publish drug-pricing information for individual and group plans, which include♓s employer-sponsored insurance.
The last administration heralded this policy as giving Americans the transparency that leads to better pri๊ces.
Patients could pi🌜ck the health-insurance plans that offer the lowest drug costs, encouraging competing plans to lower their prices, too.
Health insurers would also find 🧔i𒈔t more difficult to stealthily raise their prescription-drug prices.
As Seema Verma, then-Centers for Medicare and Medi꧑caid Services administrator, said when the rule was announced, “prices are about as clear as mud to patients,” and the policy was designed to brin💯g long-overdue clarity.
Th💖at rule is grounded in economic common sense and 🥀basic free-market principles.
Transparent competition puts downward൩ pressure on prices, as anyone who shops for groceries or cars can tell you.
Yet hea🌃lth-insurance p🦂lans’ prescription-drug prices have long been hidden from public view.
The showing how even limited transparency in other parts of health care has saved cons💟umers money — including by causing high-cost providers to💙 lower their prices.
Co❀nsidering that more than 1,200 prescription drugs saw their prices increase faster than inflation between 2021 and 2022, Americ๊ans clearly need help controlling the costs.
The rule was schedule🔯d to go into effect Jan. 1, 2022.
Yet in August 2021, Biden’s Treasury, Labor and Health and Human Services departments quietly issued a “Frequen🌟tly Asked Questions” in which they declined to implement prescription-drug price transparency.
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Under the guise of “enforcement discretion,” they announced they would “deꦬfer” this part of the rule, with the goal of pursuing “further rulemaking” at an undetermined future date.
The departments justified this delay by citing꧃ health-insurance companies’ claims the rule w🐼as unnecessary and duplicative of a federal law passed in 2021.
Yet that law𓂃, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, only requires health-insurance companies to provide drug-pricing information to federal agencies, not to the public in an easy-to-use format — which is the key to transparency and lo🐎wering prices through market pressure.
Treasury, Labor and HHS issued further FAQs in April an♌d that create broad exceptions to the rule while further delaying implementation.
Prescription-dr♍ug price transparencꦏy is effectively on indefinite hold. Yet the regulation is unambiguous: Health insurers were supposed to disclose prescription-drug prices more than 14 months ago.
F✤or all its claims of enforcement𒐪 discretion, the Biden administration has no legal authority to ignore a regulation with the force of law.
The only legal way to prevent its implementation is to issue a formal rule that repeals or amends the current one.
The Biden administration has shown no signs of going through this rigorous process, instead relying on FAQs that are equal par🦩ts arbitrary and informal.
We are calling on the federal courts to intervene. They should force Team Biden to implement the transparency rule that’s on th𓄧e books, without exceptions or delay.
Biden & Co.’s inaction has already left patients with higher prices for prescription ✱drugs.
Until and unless the Biden administration delivers this legally required transparency, the president can’t honestly claim he’s delivering the b🎃road prescription-drug relief that Americans deserve.
Tarren Bragdon is CEO of the Foundation for Government Accountability, where Stewart Whitson is legal director.
