A bunch launched Thursday plans to make rising drug prices an arise in the 2018 midterm elections.
The group, Patients for Affordable Drugs NOW, wishes back federal and state candidates who support legislative efforts to shorten high prescription medication costs, and target candidates who don’t share those goals.
It also command lobby Congress and state legislatures to “fix our broken drug pricing practice,” the group said in a statement.
Americans “are hurting under high medicine prices,” said Ben Wakana, president of Patients for Affordable Drugs NOW.
“What we are demanding to do is demonstrate to elected officials the pain in their districts that in the flesh are feeling.”
Wakana, who served as a spokesman for the U.S. Health and Human Services Conditioned by trust in in the Obama administration, said he is not aware of any previous group that essayed to make high drug prices a campaign issue nationally during an appointment year.
The group said it will have a budget of more than $1 million for this action cycle.
Wakana said the issue of drug prices transcends federal party lines.
He pointed to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll that set 60 percent of Republican voters said lowering prescription tranquillizer prices should be a top priority for Congress.
David Mitchell, a cancer compliant and founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs NOW, said, “Anyone’s who’s been a diligent or a family member of a patient knows that drug corporations rake in accomplishment profits and rip off Americans struggling to pay the bills.”
The new group, in an announcement of its plans for this plebiscite season, noted that drug corporations “spent $20 million lobbying and donated $246 million to lawmakers in the last election cycle.”
The group said it “aims to act as a counterbalance to the pharmaceutical put ones weight behind.”
Wakana said it as of yet does not have any specific candidates that it scripts to endorse or oppose.
But to come up with those lists, the group already has sent questionnaires to assorted than two dozen incumbent members of Congress, congressional challengers and governors requesting dirt on their plans to lower drug prices.
The group’s launch be given b win days after President Donald Trump repeatedly said he wants pharmaceutical prices reduced.
On Monday, at the swearing-in of new Health and Human Services Hinge on Secretary Alex Azar, Trump vowed that the former pharmaceuticals house executive is “going to get those prescription drug prices way down.”
On Tuesday gloaming, during his State of the Union address to Congress, Trump said, “One of my greatest ranks is to reduce the price of prescription drugs.”
“In many other countries, these cure-alls cost far less than what we pay in the United States,” Trump utter. “And it is very, very unfair.”
Despite those words, which repetition Trump’s criticism of drug prices in the past, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., mean on the heels of the president’s speech that “I was stunned by the complete and utter sever between his words and reality.”
Cummings, in an emailed statement, said that he, “Innumerable than any other member of Congress,” has “tried over and over and on to work with” Trump on legislation that could help abate drug prices. Those include a bill that would concession for Medicare, the government-run health coverage system for primarily senior denizens, to negotiate directly with pharmaceuticals companies on prices.
Cummings mucroniform out that he and Rep. Pete Welch, D-Vt., met with Trump last Strut to discuss rising drug costs and that the two congressmen gave the president a rough sketch of the Medicare bill. Trump “seemed enthusiastic about the proposal,” according to Cummings’ shtick indulgence.
“But all I have heard back is radio silence,” Cummings said. “In lieu of, his actions have gone in exactly the opposite direction — tapping a pharmaceutical head honcho to lead HHS and giving drug companies one of the biggest tax breaks in history notwithstanding their already record profits,” Cummings said.
“These aren’t good empty promises, they are obvious falsehoods. I must keep up want that the President will finally change course, and I stand liable to work with him or anyone else should that happen.”
In his Official of the Union address, Trump “made clear lowering drug tolls and combating the opioid crisis are priorities for his Administration,” said a White Domicile representative who didn’t want be named. “The President looks forward to evolving work with his Cabinet, Congress and local leaders on the best walk to tackle these issues.”