WASHINGTON — Congressional progressives secured a series of changes to the sweeping drug pricing bill the House is considering this week in return for dropping a threat to upend the vote altogether.
The changes do not significantly change Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reforms, which would let Medicare negotiate the prices of certain high-cost drugs. Their tweaks include a slight increase in the number of drugs that would be negotiated each year, from 35 to 50, and a provision that will pave the path, but not explicitly enact, another policy meant to block drug makers from hiking their prices more than inflation.
The tweaks seem to have finally placated the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a band of liberal Democrats that has waged war against Pelosi and her staff for nearly a year over what they saw as an inappropriately modest drug pricing reform.
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Mr. Floriko, are you trying to say that the Progressive Caucus is ineffectual and weak? That’s certainly what your “reporting” tells me. As it isn’t true (look back 4 years and compare the drift of the Democratic Party–despite Speaker Pelosi’s efforts to placate her donors), I’m curious to know who pressured you to write such a tendentious “report.” I realize you won’t answer. But I think you should know that many people read STAT who were born and raised in an era–not so long ago–in which respectable journalism aimed to convey information rather than manipulate readers. Some of us wonder what STAT’s relationship to the pharmaceutical industry is.