Washington took a decade to approve an obscure drug-pricing bill. That’s a bad omen for more ambitious reforms
WASHINGTON — After a grueling, decadelong fight, President Trump last month signed a new law that aims to help lower drug prices — the first substantial piece of legislation on that issue that’s made it to his desk.
But the bill’s yearslong struggle to make it to the president’s desk highlights a jarring reality in Washington: Even when a drug pricing bill is relatively straightforward and bolstered by broad bipartisan support, even when hospitals, insurers, doctors and patient groups all back it, even when nearly everyone in Washington wants to lower drug prices, it takes years to get anything done.
In fact, the lengthy and dysfunctional road that the CREATES Act took through Washington has jaded some of the bill’s most full-throated supporters — so much that some now question whether the law is even necessary. Some of the bill’s biggest beneficiaries wonder if the generic industry wasted millions of dollars and even more valuable political capital on the effort to push the bill across the finish line.
STAT spoke with current and former congressional staffers, regulators, lawmakers, advocates, and industry lobbyists for both brand and generic companies to piece together why the CREATES Act took so long to become law. All of the interviews revealed an uncomfortable reality for a Congress that has pushed off a far more ambitious effort to lower drug prices into an election year, in the middle of an impeachment
