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Why it matters: Thanks to Democrats’ legislation, Medicare is now negotiating the price of drugs with Big Pharma that will save seniors serious money.

The federal government is the only entity that can negotiate on equal footing with the nation’s drug companies to lower the price of prescription drugs.

Now, thanks to legislation passed by Congress last year, Medicare is beginning to negotiate on how much seniors will pay for 10 commonly used prescription drugs. Negotiations on additional drugs used by Medicare participants will come in the future.

The nation’s mega pharmaceutical companies fought to prevent the negotiations, filing lawsuits last year trying to get an injunction against the legislation being implemented.

But last week the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced the list of the first 10 medications subject to price negotiations, including those that prevent blood clots and help patients treat diabetes.

Medicare enrollees paid a total of $3.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs for those 10 drugs during 2022.

The federal legislation included a bill authored by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., that ended an earlier ban on Medicare negotiating drug prices. She said that allowing the federal government to negotiate Medicare drug prices is an overdue response to high drug prices that are hitting seniors hard.

While the legislation will deliver big savings for seniors and for the Medicare program, drug manufacturers have, not surprisingly, opposed having to reduce the obscene profits they make from the drugs.

Lowering prescription drug prices has been supported by both Democrats and Republicans for years. Former President Donald Trump vowed to lower prescription drug prices but ultimately did nothing. But Democrats and President Joe Biden, through the Inflation Reduction Act, gave Medicare the ability to help seniors with drug costs.

Big Pharma and their Republican backers in Congress use the same old argument that reducing drug prices will stifle innovation by reducing the funds they use for research.

But drug makers have long raked in immense profits and priced drugs at a much higher cost than is justified.

Even when forced to sell their drugs at a lower price, they will have plenty of profit for research and to make themselves very wealthy.

— Mankato Free Press, Sept. 3