PBGH Thanks President Biden for Leadership on Drug Costs

The Purchaser Business Group on Health was pleased to see President Biden reaffirm his commitment to support legislation to meaningfully bring down the price of prescription drugs in the United States in his speech to a Joint Session of Congress on April 28. In his remarks, he noted that his proposed policy “won’t just help people on Medicare, it will lower prescription drug costs for everyone.” This represents a meaningful improvement on legislation passed by the House of Representatives last year, which provided only partial protection to price spikes for private purchasers.

Ensuring that prescription drug price protections apply to all purchasers, not just Medicare and Medicaid, has been a top priority of PBGH and employers. As PBGH’s recent survey of employer executives found, more than half of respondents (56%) said that prescription drug costs are a “significant” or “very large” contributor to high health care costs. Nearly three in four (73%) respondents said they either strongly, somewhat or slightly agree with policies to negotiate the price of drugs and / or limit price increases for private payers. Fewer than 5% of respondents disagreed with such policies.

We thank the President for his leadership and look forward to working with his administration and Congress to pass meaningful prescription drug pricing reform this year.