CMR and drug prices

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers is urging her congressional colleagues to support her “Lower Costs, More Cures” measure, which is a watered-down response to Democrats’ anticipated proposal to address skyrocketing drug prices.

President Biden is expected soon to propose a plan to allow Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies, but McMorris Rodgers’ bill does not address the issue. The reason, she argues in a letter to colleagues, is that Biden’s proposal would discourage pharmaceutical companies from participating in large-scale development of life-saving drugs like the Covid-19 vaccines.

However, as the Washington Post points out, the argument is “dubious” in light of the billions of taxpayer dollars given to pharmaceutical companies to develop the vaccines.

A better explanation for McMorris Rodgers’ effort is the more than $150,000 she received in the last election cycle from political action committees related to the pharmaceutical industry. Among those political donors are PACs representing Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, all of which received federal dollars to develop Covid vaccines. (See OpenSecrets.org)

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