Biden Can Lower Prescription Drug Prices by Simply Following the Law

Commentary

Not every problem calls for a government solution. But in the case of runaway prescription drug prices, there is a smart, conservative policy that can help drive down the price of prescription drugs, effectively and fairly, by employing a free-market solution rather than government price controls.

The solution is price transparency, but the Biden administration is refusing to employ this solution, violating federal law in the process. A lawsuit we recently filed will force the president and his administration to follow the law, and lower prescription drug prices in the process.

Back in 2020, the Trump administration instituted a rule promoting price transparency by requiring insurance companies and group health plans to share prescription drug prices online and in a way consumers could easily access and understand.

The purpose of the rule is crystal clear: Arm consumers with the information they need to make informed health decisions for themselves and their family, and in the process, drive down the cost of medication, promoting better health care outcomes for everyone, especially those on a fixed income.

Before finalizing the rule, the administration engaged in a lengthy process, inviting and carefully considering comments from a wide range of stakeholders—more than 25,000, to be exact. To alleviate any concern that instituting the rule with only a year’s notice might prove too burdensome for insurance companies, the administration extended the effective date of the rule by a full year to January 2022.

But there’s a problem with the rule. For it to work, the administration must actually enforce it. And after taking over the presidency, the Biden administration has refused to do so, quietly ordering its agencies to defer enforcement indefinitely through a series of guidance documents issued in 2021 (pdf) and 2022. Why? With all of the president’s talk of championing lower prescription drug prices, including in a speech he delivered recently in Nevada, why would he take steps to block his agencies from enforcing a rule that would do just that?

Whatever the president’s motivations are for refusing to enforce the price transparency rule, they’re irrelevant, because federal law doesn’t give him a choice.

Under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), federal agencies are required to follow the same process they use to create a new rule to either amend or repeal that rule. Here, the administration is refusing to enforce the transparency rule, indefinitely extending the rule’s compliance deadline, which was more than a year ago, while exceeding the safe harbor provisions outlined in the rule. In both cases, the administration’s refusal to enforce price transparency has acted to amend the rule without going through the lengthy notice-and-comment process federal law requires. This it cannot do.

In response, the Foundation for Government Accountability is suing the Biden administration, asking a federal court to order the Biden administration to hold unlawful and set aside the Biden administration’s non-enforcement policy, demanding that the president follow the law and give Americans real relief on prescription drug prices in the process.

At the end of the day, if the president is serious about bringing down the price of prescription drugs, then he owes an explanation to the American people as to why he’s refusing to enforce the drug price transparency rule, which would do exactly that.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.