#FewerCures Facts Crenshaw Joins Walden to Debunk the Dems' VA Talking Point

Interview

Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) is joining Energy and Commerce Republican Leader Greg Walden (R-OR) for a video series that began last week aimed at providing the facts on Speaker Pelosi's partisan plan for fewer cures.

In the third video in the series released today, titled "Debunking the Dems' VA Talking Point," Walden and Crenshaw unravel the misleading Democrat comparison of Speaker Pelosi's drug pricing scheme and the options provided to America's veterans at the VA. The two members of Congress also detail how markets work to lower health care costs for Americans, just look at two programs, Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D, where premiums are dropping.

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Full Transcript

Crenshaw: What about the argument that the VA does this? The VA has a formulary that effectively negotiates prices, so if they can, why can't Medicare or CMS do that?

Walden: Sure. Look, thank you for your service as a veteran. You know how important the VA is to our veterans. But the VA is a much different deal than what we're working with here. Some 54% of the drugs that are available in a formulary set by the government for veterans. For example, if you're a retired teacher in California, only 54% of those drugs you have access to, as a retired teacher in California, are available in the VA.

Crenshaw: Really?

Walden: Because most of them are generic and so the latest, newest medicines that are developed may not be available and so they have this whole opt-out system where you can petition, and they're supposed to tell you if you can get this new drug or not. I don't know about you, Dan, but I've got three veterans on my staff that spend full time helping veterans, the men and women who wore our nation's uniform get the pay and benefits they deserve. There are lots of problems in the VA. I'm all in about solving them, but I don't think what is done there really gets at the issue we're trying to get at where, which is the newer drugs, higher cost drugs and how do we get down the price without destroying innovation?

Crenshaw: The VA is much smaller segment of society, it's about 9 million. About two thirds of that, 6 million, are on prescriptions, so you know they are the insurer, the pharmacy, they are the provider and so it's comparing apples to oranges because they are the insurer negotiating with the manufacturer. Which is already what Medicare Part D already is.

Walden: Right. I was here when we created Medicare Part D and the Democrats fought us every step of the way. They said nobody's ever going to write one of these drug-only policies, it's not going to work. They wanted to lock the premiums in statute at the time. Today they'd be a third higher had they done that. They have no faith in the market.

Crenshaw: Their price setting would have created higher prices right now if we had done it their way.

Walden: The premiums seniors would've paid today would be about 30% higher had they gotten their way. And you wouldn't have had these competitive forces. The Congressional Budget Office told us back then that the program would cost "X'. It is 40% less today than what they said it would be. Because, see, we have negotiation going on today between the plans and the drug companies. That competition is going on today. When you listen to Democrats, they want you to believe a pharma company just tells you what they're going to charge out and that's it. And that's not how the system works. Now are there things we need to do to get those prices down? You bet. You've never had a president lean in more on this issue than President Trump. There's a deal to be had here that gets prices down, we all want that, but doesn't adversely affect investment in new cures. I think there's a better way.

The fourth videos in the series, titled "HR 3 -- Debunking the Dems' Research Talking Point" will be released tomorrow.

FULL VIDEO SERIES

Watch each video in the #FewerCures Facts series using the links below:

"Impact on Cures"
"Tax on Cures & Impact on Innovators"

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