Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander on Thursday announced the committee will hold a hearing on June 12 at 10 a.m. EDT with Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, to examine President Trump’s drug pricing blueprint:
Senator Alexander said, “Biomedical research has made it possible to cure Hepatitis C, prevent migraines, and stop a stroke, but it is important that patients are able to afford these miracle drugs.
The cost of prescription drugs is a complex problem and the Administration has laid out a comprehensive plan to help address that problem. I welcome the President’s leadership to put patients first, and look forward to hearing more about the blueprint from Secretary Azar and learning how Congress can help reduce the cost of prescription drugs.”
This will be the committee’s fourth in a series of hearings this Congress on the price of prescription drugs. The first hearing in June 2017 examined the path a prescription drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration takes from the manufacturer to patient, and how this path affects what the patient pays. At a second hearing in October, the committee heard from industry experts on what goes into the price Americans pay when picking up their prescriptions. The committee held a third hearing in December to hear from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on a report they published on making medicine more affordable.