FDA Chief Discusses Prescription Drugs Price Reduction
The Food and Drug Administration’s head official Scott Gottlieb said on Monday that the administration will take action against the raising prescription drug cost.
Gottlieb said that the FDA will attempt to increase competition among drug companies in order to reduce the growth of prescription drug prices or reduce the prices altogether. He says the administration will speed up the regulatory procedures of generic drugs in order to allow competition among generic drugs vs name brands. Gottlieb said this in a blog post Monday shown here, “any steps we can take to encourage the development of generic competitors to complex drugs will have an outsized impact on access, and prices.”
Gottlieb’s saying these things are very out of the normal since the FDA has avoided the topic of discussing the price rise on prescription drugs and are more focused on keeping the drugs “safe and effective” and try to leave pricings up to congress. He has also said in an blog post that, “If consumers are priced out of the drugs they need, that’s a public health concern that FDA should address, within the scope of its mandate and authorities.” This is generally the same statement that Donald Trump said on pharmaceutical companies while he was campaigning. Trump said that they’re, “getting away with murder."
The topic on the rising prices on pharmaceutical drugs has been a bipartisan concern for congress, but the parties are divided and are more focused on who to blame for the catastrophe than solution for the problem. The Democrats in congress currently want greater price controls on the drug companies and allow imports of specific drugs from overseas. Republicans want to do what the FDA said it was going to do which is increase the drug competition by encouraging development of alternative generic drugs. Overall, no bill have been passed that would help resolve this issue.
In June, the Trump administration had submitted a draft executive order that would reduce the regulations on drug companies in an attempt to speed up drug approvals or to decrease the price of prescription drugs. If this order was signed it could have fixed the issue as the order is basically what the FDA is talking about doing now.
Gottlieb seems to be pushing price reductions on prescription drugs by speeding up the regulatory procedures of generic drugs in order to allow competition among generic drugs vs name brands. This is also very unprecedented since the FDA hasn’t had the discussion about the rising prescription drug costs. The actions that the FDA is talking about also seems to have the support from the Trump administration because of Trump’s draft executive order would basically do the same thing. So it seems that the FDA will start to take action on this issue since Congress or the President have not taken precautions to tackle the problem.
