White House Eager For Prescription Drug Fight Ahead Of 2024

The White House is looking to a coming battle with the pharmaceutical industry as an opportunity to bash the GOP for aligning with a powerful interest group and to burnish President Joe Biden’s populist credentials ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

In a new memo, released just hours after the federal government named the first 10 drugs set to be subject to price negotiations, administration officials made clear they hope to continue driving at the difference between Biden and congressional Republicans on the issue.

Republicans have repeatedly said they hope to repeal the entirety of the Inflation Reduction Act, including the ultra-popular provisions giving the federal government the power to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs. The pharmaceutical industry, meanwhile, has filed a multitude of lawsuits aiming to block the negotiations, which they spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying against.

“This fight is far from over. President Biden is pushing to expand Medicare’s capacity to negotiate lower drug costs, which he released a concrete plan for in his budget,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates wrote in the new memo. “[C]ongressional Republicans continue to side with Big Pharma’s price gouging and cuts to Medicare benefits instead.”

Bates pointed to comments from Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) at a June hearing backing the industry’s lawsuits, and at a new plan from the Republican Study Committee ― a conservative group consisting of a majority of House Republicans ― aiming to repeal the negotiation provisions.

“The handouts congressional Republicans are pursuing for Big Pharma would explode our deficit, weaken Medicare, and subject more American seniors and families to price gouging for life-saving medicines,” Bates wrote. “Across the board, the hallmark of congressional Republicans’ trickle-down economic agenda is to increase costs and financial burdens shouldered by hardworking Americans in exchange for welfare payoffs to the super rich and multinational corporations. In this case, Big Pharma. Their philosophy is the polar opposite of Bidenomics.”

The prescription drug fight is crucial to older Americans, the most reliable voting bloc in U.S. elections, and also plays into Biden’s larger message about standing up for families struggling with high costs while Republicans back the power of large corporations.

Biden’s most likely 2024 Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, occasionally mused about supporting prescription drug negotiation but never took any concrete steps towards making it a reality.

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