Senate Finance drug pricing bill is moving forward, with two critical amendments defeated by 14-14 tie votes. One would have stripped the inflation penalty from the bill, which probably would have killed any bipartisan momentum. The second targeted the Medicare Part B International Pricing Index and was defeated by a truly surprising set of votes.
For the biopharmaceutical industry there were two critical tie votes during the US Senate Finance Committee mark-up of the “Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act of 2019.”
Both came on amendments offered by Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey:
Insurance trade groups warned that the Big Beautiful Bill destabilize Medicaid and result in the largest ever roll-back in health care coverage in the US.
The Council of the EU has not taken forward a proposal from the European Parliament that would require companies to disclose the transfers of value they make to health care professionals and health care organizations – lawyers weigh in on the diverging proposals.
Ireland’s current voluntary system for disclosing pharmaceutical company payments to health care professionals and organizations is flawed and does not adequately deal with conflicts of interests, according to an Irish law maker.
Lawyers explain how changes to rules around drug advertising and promotional activities under the EU pharma reform package could impact companies operating in the bloc, with one legal expert advising companies to “monitor developments closely.”
Newly introduced rules for streamlining drug registration in Vietnam are said to present both opportunities and challenges for stakeholders.
At Medicines for Europe’s legal and annual conferences in Brussels last week, multiple key issues competed for attention, giving the generics and biosimilars industry plenty to think about at a critical time for EU pharma reform.
The creation of a single national formulary for medicines prescribing that could impact industry is among the action points in the UK government’s new 10-year health plan for the National Health Service in England.
