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Drug Prices Are One Focus Of Biden’s New Executive Order

By  |  July 11, 2021

President Biden’s executive order to promote business competition lays out a series of steps to lower prices for prescription drugs, including taking legal action against companies that cooperate to keep generic medicines off the market and allowing states and Indian tribes to import drugs from Canada.

The administration also is calling for measures to increase the use of generic drugs and other medicines known as biosimilars, which are essentially generic versions of expensive biological drugs already on the market.

Most of the ideas have been urged in the past, primarily by Democrats but also by the Trump administration. Growing bipartisan support for lowering drug prices could give the current push a greater likelihood of success.

According to the Wall Street Journal, what isn’t in the executive order, however, is any mention of giving the federal Medicare agency the power to directly negotiate prices with drug companies. That approach, favored by many Democratic lawmakers, would potentially be more far-reaching than any of the measures in the presidential order.

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