Peters went against wish of Pelosi

that would vastly expand the nation's social and medical programs.

The key component of H.R. 3 would allow the federal government to negotiate drug prices with a guarantee that medicines in the U.S. would cost no more than 120 percent of their average price in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.

The measure did not get out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week because Peters and Reps. Kurt Schrader, DOre., and Kathleen Rice, DN.Y. voted against it. All three have been the beneficiaries of campaign contributions from the biotech and health industries.

Peters' proposal would limit out-of-pocket costs for seniors according to their income and would cap the cost of insulin at $50 a month. The measure also would claw back money from companies that hiked drug prices faster than the rate of inflation over the past five years and would allow price negotiation on drugs “that no longer have exclusivity and for which there is no competition on the market,” according to a summary of the bill.

The Medicare price provision in H.R. 3 is expected to save about $450 billion

over the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Peters said his measure would save about $200 billion, but that the country would pay a price for the extra savings.

“You only get that money at the cost of American science, and I don't think that's a good price to pay,” he said.

Peters' support for life sciences and health organizations should be no surprise, given their prevalence in his 52nd Congressional District. He has been named “Legislator of the Year” by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization three times, including when Peters was on the San Diego City Council in 2008.

Peters has received $425,000 in contributions from pharmaceutical manufacturers since his 2012 election to Congress, according to the website OpenSecrets.

The votes by Democrats to defeat the bill received widespread coverage, including stories in the MSNBC, Huffington Post, Slate, The Guardian, the American Prospect and other progressive news websites.

Peters drew extra attention because in 2019 he voted for the bill. But he said he did so to keep the measure moving, while making clear his fear that, as written, the bill could hamper life-science companies' ability to attract investments needed for breakthrough research.

“I've been very public on my concern about H.R. 3 since the idea first came up in our committee,” he said Monday.

Peters said he cast that earlier vote to be a “team player” knowing the bill

didn't have a chance in the Senate, then under Republican control, while hoping for substantial changes in the drug-price negotiating component. He said that didn't happen and voted against it.

Though he had expressed earlier concerns, his vote for and then against H.R. 3 as he continued to receive large industry campaign donations led to questions about his motivations. Peters said he has been consistent.

The bill is “not good for the district, not good for patients,” he said.

Peters said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DSan Francisco, personally asked him to vote for H.R. 3.

“I know she's disappointed I don't agree with her, but that's my job sometimes,” he said.

Peters and nine other members of Congress signed a letter dated May 3 to Pelosi asking her to consider a balance “balance between innovation and affordability.” The letter didn't mention H.R. 3, but it seemed clear that's what it was about.

From May 4 through June 30, Peters received $66,400 in contributions from various pharmaceutical and biotech executives and the industry trade group PhRMA, according to the online magazine Salon, citing an analysis by Stat, a website that covers the biotech, pharmaceutical and life science industries.

Peters expressed concern that, in his view, people “casually dismiss” the potential for H.R. 3 to dry up private investment and hurt innovation.

Health policy and drug law expert Rachel Sachs of

Washington University in St. Louis suggested that impact might not be as much as some people think, according to Jonathan Wosen of The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Sachs said the bill almost certainly would reduce the number of drugs that come to market. But she noted the Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would shrink the number of drugs approved in the next decade from 300 to 292.

“If we're talking about the sixth or seventh drug in an already crowded class, how much clinical benefit is that creating for patients?” she told Wosen. “That's a different situation than if the drugs we lose out on are first-in-class breakthrough drugs. And pharma has not ever attempted to say that the drugs they would stop innovating in are the latter class.”

The battle has been fierce. Peters and Rep. Rice have been targeted in critical ads by Patients For Affordable Drugs Now, an organization that supports H.R. 3. PhRMA launched its own ad urging defeat of the measure, while the leaders of the Lupus Foundation of Southern California, American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association and other organizations have criticized H.R. 3.

What happens next is uncertain. The $3.5 trillion budget bill is still being negotiated and while H.R. 3 was stymied in one committee, it passed in another — the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

This isn't over yet.