Wyden, Warren, Sanders Urge President Trump to Reject Big Pharma’s Push to End Medicare Price Negotiations, Protect Medicare Enrollees
Letter to Trump warns of higher drug prices for seniors if he caves to pharmaceutical industry pressure
“You once said that [d]eals are [your] art form…You should use those skills to cut drug prices and flat out reject any request to end negotiations from giant pharmaceutical makers that have spent decades putting profits over patients.”
Washington, D.C. – Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Ranking Member and Senate Finance Committee member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wrote to President Trump urging him to reject pharmaceutical companies’ push to stop Medicare drug price negotiations.
Earlier this month, reporting revealed that “drugmakers will ask the Trump administration to pause [Medicare] drug price negotiations.” Pausing these drug price negotiations, made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), would dramatically increase costs for over 60 million Medicare beneficiaries. The Senators reminded President Trump that “the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to pause this law are not aligned with your record on drug pricing”.
Since the passage of the IRA, the government has reduced U.S. list prices for targeted drugs by up to 79 percent and is expected to save “Medicare beneficiaries $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs” alone in 2026. If continued, these price negotiations are expected to save taxpayers around $100 billion over the next decade.
President Trump has repeatedly signaled his willingness to push back at Big Pharma. During his first administration, President Trump signed executive orders to ensure “Medicare patients receive the lowest price that drug companies offer comparable foreign nations,” and to prevent drug manufacturers from conspiring with prescription drug middlemen to keep selling high-priced drugs over lower-cost generics. President Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, RFK. Jr., has similarly called for action to curb Big Pharma’s abuse, including through direct negotiations and to “cap drug prices so that companies can’t charge Americans substantially more than Europeans pay.”
But Big Pharma continues to fight against these efforts. Multiple giant pharmaceutical companies and trade groups have already filed unsuccessful lawsuits against the negotiation provisions – and continue to file suit. Eli Lilly’s CEO, Dave Ricks, said recently, “They need to fix [the IRA] before negotiating down the price of more drugs.”
“Given your past support for negotiations and efforts to lower prescription drug costs, you should flat out reject these requests from Big Pharma… It is working just fine for Medicare, and you can make it work even better,” concluded the senators.
The letter text is available here.
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