Bernie Sanders & Elijah Cummings Introduce Comprehensive Legislation to Lower Soaring Drug Prices

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) today introduced legislation to address skyrocketing increases in prescription drug prices.  

Americans, who already pay the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world, saw prices jump more than 12 percent last year, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That increase was more than double the rise in overall medical costs. Nearly one in five Americans did not fill a prescription last year because they could not afford it.

“Americans should not have to live in fear that they will go bankrupt if they get sick. People should not have to go without the medication they need just because their elected officials aren’t willing to challenge the drug and health care industry lobby,” Sanders said. The pharmaceutical industry spent nearly $230 million on lobbying last year, some $65 million more than any other industry, and employed over 1,400 registered lobbyists. 

 “In light of 1,000 percent price increases – and more – American families are fed up with trying to afford their medications as they watch drug companies rake in record profits,” Ranking Member Cummings said. “This commonsense and comprehensive bill will reverse this alarming trend, help put people before profits, and make lifesaving drugs more affordable and accessible to millions of Americans families.” 

The Prescription Drug Affordability Act of 2015 authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies to bring down costs for Medicare drug benefits. The bill also includes tougher penalties for drug companies that commit fraud and bans the practice of brand name drugmakers paying competitors to keep lower-priced generic substitutes off the market. The bill also lowers barriers to the importation of lower-cost drugs from Canada. 

“We should use our buying power to get better deals for the American people. Other countries do it and so should we,” Sanders said.

The Senate bill is cosponsored by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.). The legislation is supported by the Alliance for Retired Americans, Social Security Works, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, National Center for Health Research, Public Citizen, Association of Clinicians for the Underserved, and RxRights, representing the voices of millions of Americans.

Every single member of the Baltimore city council is a Democrat--

John Nolte lays it out in at Breitbart:

• Elijah Cummings has represented Baltimore in the U.S. Congress for more than thirty years. As I write this, despite his objectively disastrous reign, the Democrat-infested mainstream media is treating the Democrat like a local folk hero, not the obvious and glaring failure he really is.
  
  Every single member of the Baltimore city council is a Democrat.
  
  Liberalism and all the toxic government dependence and cronyism and union corruption and failed schools that comes along with it, has run amok in Baltimore for a half-century, and that is Baltimore’s problem. It is the free people of Baltimore who elect and then re-elect those who institute policies that have so spectacularly failed that once-great city. It is the free people of Baltimore who elected Mayor Room-To-Destroy.