WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa released the following statement regarding a newly-released report from the Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation which finds that in most cases, Americans are paying more for prescription drugs than people in other countries.

“This report highlights another big part of the issue of high prescription drug prices. This is more evidence that Americans pay significantly higher prices for drugs than people do in other countries. This time the focus is on drugs that are given to patients in doctors’ offices or hospitals rather than dispensed at the pharmacy. Higher U.S. prices hurt patients and taxpayers alike. There’s no reason that Americans should pay more than anyone else for exactly the same medications, especially since so many of these medications were developed and manufactured right here in America.”

HHS Secretary Alex Azar highlighted a series of alarming statistics uncovered by the report, including that Medicare is paying more for 19 out of the 27 drugs studied compared to countries with similar economic conditions and that the United States pays 180 percent more, on average, than the international price for the same prescription drugs.

President Donald Trump today announced his plan to reform how Medicare pays for certain prescription drugs, which includes setting a benchmark for medication costs in order to even the playing field and ultimately lead to decreased prescription drug prices.

Grassley is a leader in the fight to decrease prescription drug costs. He has proposed a number of common-sense reforms that would make these medications more affordable for Iowans and all Americans. Most recently, Grassley, along with Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, has introduced legislation to require pharmaceutical companies to disclose prescription list drug prices in television ads. Grassley has also been a consistent supporter of the safe importation of prescription drugs from Canada and has introduced legislation to make it legal for U.S. consumers to purchase such medications.

Grassley led the bipartisan Creating and Restoring Equal Access to Equivalent Samples (CREATES) Act, legislation that would combat anticompetitive prices used by some brand-name pharmaceutical and biologic companies to lower the cost of generic drugs, through the Senate Judiciary Committee where it was passed with strong support. Grassley has also conducted extensive oversight efforts into various federal agencies, including HHS and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), to root out waste, fraud and abuse within the health care system that too often leads to higher drug costs for Americans. Recently, Grassley has focused on the incorrect classification of prescription drugs under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program, like the EpiPen, which has caused the states and taxpayers to pay more for the drugs than they should. On August 16, 2018, the FDA approved the first generic of EpiPen, resulting in a reduced price for the life-saving auto-injector.

Grassley also authored the Medicare prescription drug benefit, Part D, which was built on private market competition to drive down drug costs. Due to its common-sense structure, it performed under cost estimates.

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