Rep. Peters prevails on drug-pricing provisions

About a year ago, Rep. Scott Peters was not very popular in some quarters.

He helped block a broad plan to lower prescription drug prices, a Democratic priority. Even a direct appeal from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could not persuade him to vote for the bill.

All the while, media reports highlighted the hundreds of thousands of dollars the San Diego Democrat had received from pharmaceutical companies and biotech firms, which have supported him since his election in 2012.

The criticism was brutal. A group called Patients for Affordable Drugs Now ran an ad featuring a woman identified as a registered nurse and a multiple sclerosis patient talking about the high cost of her medication.

“It makes me so angry that members of Congress are choosing Big Pharma over patients. It’s unforgivable,” she says.

A narrator then mentions Peters voted against the bill that would have, among other things, allowed Medicare to negotiate with drug companies to lower costs.

“Tell Congressman Peters, stop selling us out to drug companies.”

Others, including AARP, also criticized Peters and a small handful of other House Democrats who stood in the way of HR 3. Peters proposed a scaledback alternative measure that included some of the concepts in the broader bill, such as Medicare negotiating with pharmaceutical companies.

There were suspicions this was a fig leaf and Peters’ goal was to block any drugpricing reforms. That turned out not to be the case.

Peters’ framework was included in the Inf lation Reduction Act that was signed by President Joe Biden on Tuesday. As the bill headed for final approval in the Senate, some of those critics were full of praise.

“Make no mistake, this legislation is game changing,” said David Mitchell, founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs Now. “It alters the trajectory of drug pricing and policy in the United States. It finally begins to break the power of multinational drug corporations to dictate prices of brand-name drugs to the American people.”

Jo Ann Jenkins, AARP chief executive officer, said: “This bill will save Medicare hundreds of billions of dollars and give seniors peace of mind knowing there is an annual limit on what they must pay out-of-pocket for medications.”

Drug companies aren’t wild about all the components of the adopted plan, but they fought tooth and nail against the earlier proposal. They insisted it would dry up investments needed to continue producing drugs, though some analysts contended their real concern was that it would reduce profits.

Peters shared the companies’ view on the policy implications, but also said there was a simple political reason to oppose it.

“I knew HR 3 would not get 50 votes needed to clear the Senate,” he said, “and that it would stifle drug discovery and the development of cures.”

Drug companies, Peters and like-minded members of Congress weren’t the only ones who had problems with HR 3. The Lupus Foundation of Southern California, the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association and other organiza