Third committee is the charm?

After a contentious markup yesterday, a third House committee has now passed health care transparency legislation, clearing the way for Republican leadership to hash out a package and determine what might come to the floor after August recess.

However, the Republicans on Ways & Means will come into those negotiations with less leverage, as they failed to get Democrats on board with their bill. The parties disagreed about approaches to legislating on health care transparency, and how much information health care companies should have to provide about their owners.

Of note: Some consumer advocacy groups even accused the bill of being easier on hospitals than the Trump administration's existing price transparency rules.

pbm reform

Seeing double

In the second half of yesterday's health markup double header, the Finance Committee managed to pass its PBM reform legislation out of committee with only one defection, my colleague John Wilkerson reports.

"It's pretty hard to get 26 votes around here," Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said after the vote. "So we're thrilled."

Although the committee didn't vote on any amendments, some changes were added to lay the groundwork for future regulation, such as increased transparency of PBM business practices and studies to give Congress a better understanding of how PBMs make money. Get the full rundown here.

policy

Making sense of the flurry of PBM reforms

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Adobe

With PBM reforms swirling in six different committees, I spoke with experts and stakeholders to distill the most impactful provisions Congress is considering now — and what's off the table.

The big picture is that the bills nibble around the edges of how PBMs operate, but don't touch the core dynamic that has incentivized higher drug prices, and most proposals wouldn't actually lower out-of-pocket prices of drugs for patients. In the current system, uninsured patients paying inflated list prices are the biggest losers.

Keep this story handy as your cheat sheet as we go into the back half of the year.

weight-loss drugs

A new proponent of obesity drug coverage

Following months of anticipation, Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) recently released their latest version of legislation that would allow Medicare to cover anti-obesity medications. The text is exactly the same as prior years, but one notable difference in the bill's supporters caught your author's attention.

They have a new endorsement from the pharmaceutical industry: Boehringer Ingelheim. The company is planning to launch a late-stage trial for a weight-loss treatment that could compete with drugs made by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, and access to the Medicare market could be key to the drug's commercial success in a competitive market.

A Boehringer Ingelheim spokesperson said the company will "support any efforts, like the Treat and Reduce Obesity Act, to improve access to important treatment options." The company also started lobbying on access to obesity medications starting in the first quarter of this year, according to federal disclosures.

drug pricing

H.R. 3 déjà vu?

Three top House Democrats on health care rolled out a bill yesterday that would expand the Inflation Reduction Act to make it resemble an older proposal that was watered down during negotiations last summer.

The bill is the clearest sign yet of how Democrats hope to expand on their drug pricing law if they take retake power in the House after the next election, my colleague John Wilkerson and I explain.

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