On Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) introduced a bill aimed at cutting the price of prescription drugs under Medicare in half in one of a series of actions that the senator is taking on drug prices.
The bill, introduced alongside Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), would require that Medicare access the same prescription drug prices as the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which has been allowed to negotiate drug prices for nearly 30 years.
If passed, the bill would save Medicare an estimated $835 billion over the next 10 years, according to a press release. It would take effect at the beginning of next year.
“There is no rational reason, other than greed, for Medicare to pay twice as much for the same exact prescription drugs as the VA,” Sanders said in a statement. “The bill we are introducing today would cut the price of prescription drugs in half under Medicare, save taxpayers $835 billion over the next decade and provide real relief to millions of seniors who cannot afford their prescription drugs.”
“If Republicans are really serious about reducing the deficit they should support this bill,” Sanders added.
The bill would, in essence, allow Medicare to buy drugs at half the price the agency currently does. According to a study by the Government Accountability Office commissioned by Sanders’s office, as of 2017, Veterans Affairs paid on average over 50 percent less for a sample of several hundred drugs, including the top 100 brand name and generic drugs in Medicare’s drug list.
A separate Congressional Budget Office report from 2021 found that the average price for 176 top drugs was $190 for Veterans Affairs and $343 for Medicare. For certain specialty drugs, Veterans Affairs pays an average of $2,002 for a one month supply — roughly 60 percent lower than Medicare’s average price of $4,902.
Even though Veterans Affairs has been able to negotiate prescription drug prices for decades, Medicare was only recently granted the ability to negotiate prices for 10 drugs starting in 2026 under Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act.
The bill is just one of Sanders’s recent and planned moves as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee to target the pharmaceutical industry. In recent months, the senator has been putting pressure on Big Pharma executives like the CEO of Moderna, on issues ranging from the prices of COVID vaccines to insulin to all prescription drugs in general. This month, Sanders is holding a hearing on insulin prices, for which he has called the CEOs of three major insulin manufacturers to testify.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 98 new monthly donors before midnight tonight.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy