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Improving Medicaid Programs and Opportunities for Eligible Beneficiaries Act

Floor Speech

Date: Dec. 11, 2018
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Entitlements and the Safety Net Health and Health Care

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Mr. SCHRADER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 7217, the IMPROVE Act.

I appreciate all the work that has been done on this bill over the years. From improving care for kids with complex medical conditions to strengthening community-based, long-term care services for the disabled community, there is a lot to support in this bill.

I want to highlight one portion of the bill that my colleague and good friend Peter Welch alluded to a few moments ago. A few years ago, families were shocked when the drug company Mylan raised the price on EpiPen, a common generic drug used to treat allergies in emergency situations, by more than 400 percent.

While patients were facing this sticker shock for a drug necessary to keep them alive, investigators in the Department of Health and Human Services and in our own House and Senate committees were doing some digging of our own.

In the course of their investigation, they found that not only was the manufacturer of EpiPen ripping off patients and their families, they were ripping off the American taxpayer, too. By misclassifying their drug as a generic when it was actually a brand drug, Medicaid was being overcharged for years.

Further investigations by HHS found that hundreds of other drugs were also misclassified, and Medicaid was overcharged by more than $1 billion in the 4 years between 2012 and 2016. By passing this bill today, we can put an end to this waste and abuse in our Medicaid system.

Under this bill, if a drug company knowingly misclassifies their brand drug as a generic, CMS will have the power to fine that drug company double the normal rebate they would have had to pay the government. The bill strengthens CMS and congressional oversight of the program to prevent this from ever happening again.

I thank Mr. Welch, and Senators Wyden and Grassley, for their active work on this one, as well as Mr. Barton, Mr. Green, Chairman Walden, and Mr. Pallone for including it in this great reform package.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to support the bill.

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