In March, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Xavier Becerra as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services despite nearly unanimous opposition from Republicans. The near party-line vote was 50-49 with Maine Republican Susan Collins the only Republican to support his confirmation. A recent Endpoints News article describes how Becerra might think about regulating drug pricing and the pharmaceutical industry.
Drug Pricing
The article points out that the partisan divide over his nomination came, in part, due to Republican opposition to Becerra’s tough stance against the pharmaceutical industry.
“I think we can all agree the price we’re paying for some of these prescription drugs is far higher than it should be. All you have to do is travel to another country to find we’re paying way more,” Becerra said in his Senate committee hearing in February to review his nomination.
Endpoints cites Harvard Medical School professor Aaron Kesselheim, who described some detailed policy positions Becerra could take.
Kesselheim said he thought Becerra could “right away take some steps to address Part B drug pricing, since right now Medicare engages in no oversight of Part B prices; it just pays the ASP [average sales price] plus a small percent. This could include ideas such as enforcing accurate reporting of ASPs, reducing spending on biologic drugs with biosimilars by bringing them all under the same reimbursement code, shifting certain drugs from Part B to Part D (with associated limits on OOP [out of pocket] costs), and instituting the MedPAC recommendation to create a CMMI [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center] demonstration project to negotiate prices of Part B drugs. Ultimately, he may need to develop the mechanics of a system to negotiate fair drug prices based on their clinical benefits if such a negotiation process is approved by Congress, since it will most naturally be housed within CMS.”
The article also points that as Attorney General of California, Becerra led the state to become the first in the nation to ban pay-for-delay agreements, which can delay the entry of generic drugs to market, and he defeated a challenge to the law from the Association for Accessible Medicines (AAM), the generic pharmaceutical industry group.
“I took on a number of these drugmakers by going behind the curtain on how they reached their pricing and we were able to prove there was collusion going on,” he added in the February hearing.
Pharma Industry
The article concludes by noting that pharma industry groups pledged to work with Becerra.
Stephen Ubl, president and CEO of industry group PhRMA, said in a statement that the industry looks forward to working with HHS “to help address our nation’s leading priorities: getting COVID-19 under control and improving health care affordability and access for all Americans.”
AAM offered their congratulations and said they look forward to working with him “to advance policies that enhance the competitiveness of safe, effective, affordable generics and biosimilars.”