Claim: Pelosi offers Medicare negotiation plan to curb drug prices.
Verdict: SUPPORTS

Retrieved passages:
title: Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act of 2007
text: Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act of 2007 In January 2007, the 110th United States House of Representatives approved , the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act, a bill to require federal officials to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices for the 23 million senior citizens who have signed up for Medicare's prescription drug coverage. If passed, the law would repeal a ban on letting the government negotiate with manufacturers for lower prices — a provision that was part of the GOP-sponsored 2003 measure called the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, which created the prescription drug program.

title: Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act of 2007
text: Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act of 2007 In January 2007, the 110th United States House of Representatives approved , the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act, a bill to require federal officials to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices for the 23 million senior citizens who have signed up for Medicare's prescription drug coverage. If passed, the law would repeal a ban on letting the government negotiate with manufacturers for lower prices — a provision that was part of the GOP-sponsored 2003 measure called the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, which created the prescription drug program.

title: Political positions of Ron Paul
text: the costs of medications for the elderly and disabled, and which prohibited the government from negotiating directly with pharmaceutical companies to try to get lower prices for the covered medications. In 2007, he again went against the majority of House Republicans when he voted with all of the Democrats in support of the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act, which, if enacted, would have given the government the authority to negotiate Medicare Part D drug prices with the manufacturers. During the 2012 presidential primary campaign, Paul said that although he remains opposed to Medicare Part D, repealing it was not

title: Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
text: 1332 "state innovation" waivers giving states the flexibility to increase choice, competition, and affordability under the ACA. The Institute's health care scholars oppose allowing the federal government to negotiate prices in the Medicare Part D prescription drug program and believe that drug price negotiating has adverse effects in the Veterans Administration. Paul Howard argues that the first step in reforming Medicaid is for Congress to enact per-capita spending caps. In 2016, Howard argued that California’s Proposition 61–a measure that would have imposed price controls on some prescription drugs in the state – was a flawed proposal that might have actually

title: Economic policy of Donald Trump
text: measures that would reduce the value of the existing debt, making it cheaper to repurchase, would increase the cost of issuing new debt. Such a threat also could undermine the stability of global financial markets." Trump has called for allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with prescription-drug companies to get lower prices for the Medicare Part D prescription-drug benefit, something currently prohibited by law. Trump has claimed on several occasions that this proposal would save $300 billion a year. Glenn Kessler, the fact-checker for the "Washington Post", gave this statement a "four Pinocchios" rating, writing that this was a "truly absurd"

title: Political positions of Ron Paul
text: private contracts, and binding arbitration to resolve medical disputes benefits patients, who receive full compensation in a timelier manner than under the current system," as well as physicians and hospitals, since their litigation costs, and malpractice insurance premiums, would be markedly reduced. Paul proposes that all government funding of medical care be eliminated (with the exception, perhaps, of care for veterans). His Plan to Restore America budget proposal would begin a phase out of Medicare starting in 2013, when workers younger than 25 would be able to opt out of participating in the program. He says that during the transition

title: Nancy Pelosi
text: healthcare. On March 10, 2017, Pelosi stated that Democrats would continue battling Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act but would also be willing to form a compromise measure in the event that Republicans were unable to pass a compromise bill and reached out for bipartisan support. She indicated her support for the Republican plan to expand Health Savings Accounts and said the question of Republicans accepting an expansion of Medicaid was important. In September, Pelosi sent a letter to Democrats praising Senator John McCain for announcing his opposition to the latest Republican effort to repeal and replace the

title: Jack Conway (politician)
text: them signed a card. If elected to the Senate, Conway says the first piece of legislation he will introduce would repeal what he calls a "sweetheart deal" for the pharmaceutical industry that currently prohibits Medicare from negotiating for lower prices on prescription drugs. Citing a report from the National Committee on Social Security and Medicare, he says that this alone would save the federal government $200 billion. Conway opposes privatizing Social Security and thinks these benefits should be maintained and protected from any outside risks associated with the financial markets. In his 2002 run for Congress Conway stated that raising

title: Medicare (United States)
text: their Medicaid rolls. Ultimately Kaiser found that the plan would raise total social costs by more than twice the savings to the federal government. Negotiating the prices of prescription drugs Currently, people with Medicare can get prescription drug coverage through a public Medicare Part C plan or through the standalone Part D prescription drug plans (PDPs) program. Each plan sponsor establishes its own coverage policies and could if desired independently negotiate the prices it pays to drug manufacturers. But because each plan has a much smaller coverage pool than the entire Medicare program, many argue that this system of paying

title: Ron Wyden
text: lower priced prescriptions from Canada, and negotiating bulk drug purchases for Medicare in order to lower costs. In 2003 Wyden joined with Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Trent Lott (R-MS) to help pass the Bush Administration's Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. The Bush Administration is alleged to have forced officials to hide its true cost, which later was triple its original claim. The bill has been criticized as favoring pharmaceutical companies, as it prohibits the federal government from negotiating prescription drug rates. Not long after Tom Daschle's withdrawal as President Barack Obama's nominee as United States Secretary of

title: Presidency of Donald Trump
text: throughout his presidency, Trump said he would cut the costs of pharmaceuticals. During his first seven months in office, there were 96 price hikes for every drug price cut. In May 2018, Trump announced that he would not allow Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices from pharmaceutical companies, abandoning a promise he made as candidate. Shortly after the 2018 mid-term elections, the large pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced a price increase for dozens of drugs, after it had reportedly bowed to pressure not to do so earlier by the Trump administration. In September 2017, Trump nominated

title: Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act
text: lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the trade association and lobby group for the drug industry with a "rumored salary of $2 million a year," drawing criticism from Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group. They claimed that Tauzin "may have been negotiating for the lobbying job while writing the Medicare legislation." Tauzin was responsible for including a provision that prohibited Medicare from negotiating prices with drug companies. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said, The bill was debated and negotiated for nearly six months in Congress, and finally passed amid unusual circumstances. Several times in the legislative

title: Bill Novelli
text: provides a prescription-drug plan for the elderly but that prohibits the government from negotiating lower drug prices." Novelli responded:"We have a Republican-controlled Congress, and they believe that if you had Medicare negotiating with the drug companies, you would be fixing prices." Novelli said he earned, as the AARP CEO, "...$420,000 a year. I think my salary is very fair." Solomon continued, "Have you invested any of your own money in the health-insurance business?" Novelli responded, "You mean stocks and bonds? My wife manages that. I honestly don't know. I know that we own a lot of mutual funds that buy

title: Prescription drug prices in the United States
text: negotiations occur between pharmaceutical companies and private insurers or vendors. In 2003, a Republican-majority Congress created Medicare Part D, which prevented Medicare the country's largest single-payer health care system from negotiating drug prices. In effect, drug manufacturers in the US were allowed to set their own prices resulting in the unregulated pricing variation for prescription drugs. However, the government does employ drug pricing strategies for other smaller government health programs like the Veterans Health Administration, the Department of Defense, the 340B Drug Pricing Program (1992), and Medicaid. In 2005, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined the change in US drug

title: Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act
text: votes from "yea" to "nay". The bill passed 220-215. The Democrats cried foul, and Bill Thomas, the Republican chairman of the Ways and Means committee, challenged the result in a gesture to satisfy the concerns of the minority. He subsequently voted to table his own challenge; the tally to table was 210 ayes, 193 noes. The Senate's consideration of the conference report was somewhat less heated, as cloture on it was invoked by a vote of 70-29. However, a budget point of order raised by Tom Daschle, and voted on. As 60 votes were necessary to override it, the challenge

title: First 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency
text: a product where there's not even a safety problem. So it's crazy. I'm surprised you can't get them to move faster than that." Trump had promised in March 2016, to reform the pharmaceutical industry, including the removal of existing free market barriers to allow imported, dependable, safe, reliable, and cheaper drugs from overseas, bringing more options to American consumers. Following Trump's press conference on January 11, "Fortune" claimed that the largest pharmaceutical companies had lost over $20 billion in 20 minutes. The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (2003) expressly prohibited Medicare from negotiating bulk prescription drug prices and

title: Healthcare policies of candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election
text: with pharmaceutical companies to get the best price for drugs provided in the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. Rep. Paul believes that the more government interference in medicine, the higher prices rise and the less efficient care becomes. He points to how many people today are upset with the HMO system, but few people realize that HMOs came about because of federal mandate in 1973. He also points to the 1974 ERISA law that grants tax benefits to employers for providing insurance but not individuals; he prefers a system which grants tax credits to individuals. He supports the U.S.

title: Nancy Pelosi
text: passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Pelosi was a key figure in convincing President Barack Obama to continue pushing for health care reform after the election of Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown in a January special election, a defeat that was seen as potentially fatal to Democratic reform efforts. After delivering 219 votes in the House for Obama's signature health care package, Pelosi was both praised and heckled as she made her way to Capitol Hill. Pelosi has voted to increase Medicare and Medicaid benefits. She does not endorse Senator Bernie Sanders' bill for single payer

title: Pharmaceutical lobby
text: from directly negotiating prices with drug companies who provide those prescription drugs covered by Medicare. Price negotiations are instead conducted between manufacturers and the pharmacy benefit managers providing Medicare Part D benefits under contract with Medicare. In 2010 the Congressional Budget Office estimated the average discount negotiated by pharmacy benefit managers at 14%. The high price of U.S. prescription drugs has been a source of ongoing controversy. Corporations state that the high costs are the result of pricey research and development programs. Critics point to the development of drugs having only small incremental benefit. According to Marcia Angell, the former

title: Jane Corwin
text: work to cut federal government spending, reduce taxes and repeal the health care overhaul that was enacted by the Democratic majority Congress in 2010. She signed a tax pledge, promising to oppose all efforts to increase marginal tax rates on individuals and businesses, and to oppose reductions of tax credits or deductions that are not matched by reductions in tax rates. She strongly supported U.S. Representative Paul Ryan's proposal to reform the Medicare program for senior citizens by turning it into a program that would give seniors vouchers to purchase private health insurance coverage. Corwin said the plan would protect