TAPP Responds to CMS Request for Comments on Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program and Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program
The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity has responded to a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services request for comments on the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program and Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program.
TAPP’s comments emphasize investment incentives, U.S. competitiveness, the full cost of care, market competition, and TAPP’s longstanding opposition to government price controls.
In part, TAPP wrote the following, in part:
TAPP shares the Administration’s objective of making prescription medicines more affordable for American patients. We believe, however, that affordability cannot be measured solely by the government price assigned to an existing medicine. Policymakers must consider whether their decisions encourage competition, support the development of better treatments, lower the total cost of delivering care, and preserve America’s position as the global leader in medical innovation.
For these reasons, TAPP urges CMS to reconsider its proposed treatment of certain fixed-dose combination (FDC) medicines and follow-on products when determining qualifying single-source drugs (QSSDs). The final rule should not automatically treat a separately approved medicine as merely another version of an older product because the medicines share an active ingredient or component.
More broadly, CMS should implement the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program in the narrowest manner permitted by law and avoid administrative policies that unnecessarily expand the reach or economic consequences of the Inflation Reduction Act’s prescription-drug price controls.