Casten Joins Congressman Golden to Introduce New Bill to Stop Drug Companies’ Unfair Price Hikes, Address Rising Rx Costs in America
WASHINGTON — As Americans struggle with ever-increasing healthcare costs, U.S. Representative Sean Casten (IL-06) joined Rep. Jared Golden (ME-02) to introduce a bill today to help address unfair price hikes for prescription drugs. The legislation imposes penalties on pharmaceutical companies who harm consumers with sudden, exorbitant price increases and promotes competition among manufacturers to lower drug prices.
Elissa Slotkin (MI-08), Gil Cisneros (CA-39), and Max Rose (NY-11) also cosponsored the Forcing Limits on Abusive and Tumultuous (FLAT) Prices Act. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), a long-time leader on fair drug pricing, has introduced companion legislation in the Senate.
Casten said, "For far too long families across America have been shouldering the burden of skyrocketing prescription drug prices. Just last month pharmaceutical corporations raised the prices of over 1,000 medications. Old drugs that have been on the market for a long time that people's lives depend on, like insulin, have seen alarming prices spikes. That's why I'm proud to introduce The Forcing Limits on Abusive and Tumultuous (FLAT) Drug Prices Act that will prevent large prices spikes by penalizing pharmaceutical corporations when they put profits over people."
"We have to attack skyrocketing drug costs to make healthcare more affordable for working Maine people," said Congressman Golden. "For years, Big Pharma has reaped record profits by jacking up the prices of drugs and squeezing every last cent out of regular folks who need their medicine to lead healthy lives. Our bill puts the needs of Maine people before corporations. The FLAT Prices Act imposes penalties on drug companies who set unfair, unnecessary prices and limits their monopolies to encourage competition and help drive down the cost of care."
"Abusive drug-pricing practices can financially cripple families and even put life-saving drugs out of people's reach," said Congresswoman Slotkin. "That is flat-out wrong. I regularly hear from the people who live in my Michigan district about the impact high drug prices have on them, their parents and their children. We have to stop companies from taking unfair advantage of them, and this bill will help do just that."
The Representative's legislation targets the sort of corporate abuse made famous by Mylan's nearly 600 percent increase on EpiPens and Turing Pharmaceuticals' 5,000 percent increase on anti-parasitic drug Daraprim. Among other provisions, the FLAT Prices Act:
- Defines a price spike as an increase of more than 10 percent within one year, 18 percent within two years, or 25 percent within three years.
- Discourages pharmaceutical companies from spiking prices to dramatically increase profits and speeds access for generic manufacturers of prescription drugs. The bill shortens monopoly periods for drugs subject to significant price spikes. Under current law, pharmaceutical companies are awarded multi-year monopoly periods for new drugs, during which time cheaper, generic alternatives are excluded from the market.
- Requires drug companies to report price spikes to the Department of Health and Human Services. Failure to report price spikes further shortens monopoly periods.