House Democrats ready to move drug pricing bill, Big Pharma and Mitch McConnell ready to fight it

While Moscow Mitch McConnell stood on the Senate floor Thursday morning declaring, "Democrats are too busy hosting a panel of law professors to criticize President Trump on television instead of the things American people actually need us to address," House Democratic leadership was announcing that it’s finalized H.R. 3, the "Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act," for a floor vote next week.

“We are going to give Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices, and make those prices available to Americans with private insurance as well as Medicare beneficiaries," Speaker Nancy Pelosi and key committee chairs announced. "American seniors and families shouldn't have to pay more for their medicines than what Big Pharma charges in other countries for the same drugs." The bill would allow Medicare to negotiate prices, just as the Veterans Health Administration and Department of Defense currently do for veterans and active-duty service members.

Despite the fact that lowering drug prices is a bipartisan issue, and Donald Trump himself has argued for it, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will block it. He won't even bring up a bill authored by one of his own powerful committee chairmen, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley. That's because they don't want Medicare negotiating drug prices. They don't want Medicare saving the government and seniors money. They don't want the program becoming any more popular, but mostly they don't want Big Pharma to lose any of its obscene profits.

And Big Pharma, with its Koch network buddies, is gearing up to fight it with millions of dollars in attack ads against House Democrats over the plan. Liberal groups are fighting back, however, and a coalition of advocacy groups, including Health Care Voter, Health Care for America Now, MomsRising, and the Alliance for Retired Americans, is planning its own ad blitz. "We are doing our level best with the resources that we have to make sure that [House Democrats] know that we have their back," said Brad Woodhouse, the executive director of Protect Our Care, the umbrella group coordinating the effort.

"We are up against the largest lobbying operation in the history of the world," Woodhouse said. "No one in the history of the world has spent more money lobbying to protect their profits than the pharmaceutical companies." We are also up against Mitch McConnell, the one person most responsible for not letting us have nice things anymore.

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