On Thursday, September 14, CAHC President Joel White, testified to the House Oversight and Accountability Health Care and Financial Services Subcommittee for its “Inflation Reduction Act: A Year in Review” Hearing.
Joel’s written testimony can be found here, which focused on the health and Medicare aspects of the law.
Joel’s opening statement made the following points:
- The human impact of the IRA- how patients suffering without treatments today will be negatively impacted by a law that will lead to fewer cures
- The flawed orphan drug exemption
- How exempting the IRA from normal rulemaking processes will lead to bad, opaque government practices
- Example questions and investigations the Oversight Committee should begin asking of the Biden administration implementing the law
- How the small molecule penalty will lead to increased costs and worse health disparities
While the majority of the hearing focused on non-health related provisions of the IRA (e.g. green tax credits), Chair McClain (R-MI) did ask Joel how the IRA would lead to increased costs for prescription drugs and why “negotiation” was a misleading term.
The Committee indicated it wants to work with CAHC to help develop its agenda for overseeing implementation of IRA’s Medicare provisions.
Click here to view the full hearing.