When Congress added prescription drug coverage to Medicare a few years back, the drug industry won a huge victory: The new law barred the federal government from negotiating on the prices Medicare pays for prescription drugs. The big House health-care bill that landed yesterday would reverse that, and give the HHS secretary the authority to haggle for a better deal. That’s just one of several ways in which the House bill would be tougher than the Senate Finance bill on the drug industry, the WSJ reports this morning . The House bill would also mandate rebates from the industry for drugs sold to elderly people eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. Those would total about $60 billion over a decade. The subtext here is that the House wasn’t party to the high-profile deal that pharma made

earlier this year with Senate Dems and the Obama administration. Under that deal, drug makers agreed to give up about $80 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. The House bill would cost the drug industry about $140 billion over that period. Of course, the industry stands to gain if more Americans have health insurance. And the House bill does grant drug makers a 12-year exclusivity period for biotech drugs, which means less generic competition. A trade group spokesman told the WSJ that the industry still thinks a compromise can be reached. “Just because one scene in the play makes you want to bolt for the door, you don’t tear up your theater tickets,” he said. Photo: iStockphoto

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House Bill Would Allow Feds to Negotiate Medicare Drug Prices