2019 was supposed to be the year Washington lowered drug prices. What happened?
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers of all stripes made an agreement the day following the midterm elections last November: While they might not agree on much, they would work together to lower prescription drug prices.
The message came from Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker-in-waiting; Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s Republican majority leader; and from President Trump. All agreed: Even in a deeply polarized Washington, drug pricing would top the 2019 agenda.
Instead, in the last year, the Trump administration withdrew two drug pricing proposals, dawdled on a third, and lost in court on a fourth. Democrats advanced a party-line proposal in the House of Representatives that both the White House and congressional Republicans have lambasted. And McConnell himself has stonewalled a surprisingly bipartisan bill in the Senate. In a year drug pricing advocates had pegged for breakthroughs, neither elected lawmakers nor the Trump administration enacted significant policies that will lower consumer drug spending.
It’s a congressional letdown that highlights the difficulty of legislating in a divided Washington and in taking on the powerful
