US Senator Sanders tries to get prescription drug prices into Social Spending Bill

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Oct. 31 (Reuters) – US Senator Bernie Sanders was working to include a provision to cut prescription drug prices in the $ 1.75 trillion social spending bill pending in the US Congress before a House of Representatives vote, with President Joe Biden expressing his optimism about the bill will come to a vote this week.

Biden suffered a setback on Thursday as the House scrapped plans to vote on an infrastructure bill before he left Europe for an international summit with other world leaders, with Progressive Democrats seeking more time to consider his Call for a separate $ 1.75 trillion plan to address climate action, preschool education and other social initiatives. Read more

A proposal that would allow the US government’s Medicare health plan for the elderly to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs was not included in the social spending bill. Read more

“I spent all day yesterday on the phone… We are continuing this effort (to include the prescription drug pricing provision in the bill),” Sanders told CNN in an interview on Sunday.

“It is scandalous that we continue to pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs,” added Sanders, who has championed this cause for years.

At a press briefing in Rome on Sunday, the US president, who left for Europe for the G20 summit as the main Democrats rushed to strike a deal on his economic program, expressed optimism about an imminent vote on the bill on social spending.

The so-called Build Back Better framework, Biden said, “God willing, (will) be voted on as early as next week.”

House Democrats had previously signaled that a vote could take place as early as Tuesday.

Biden had sought to unite his fellow Democrats behind the climate and social spending plan with personal appeals on Thursday, and pushed for a vote Thursday on the $ 1,000 billion infrastructure bill, another mainstay of its national program.

He hoped a framework on the larger measure would convince progressive House Democrats to back the infrastructure bill, but their insistence that the two act together led House leaders to drop a planned vote.

The plan also didn’t include paid family leave or billionaire tax, with some constituencies angered by the Biden administration’s lack of key commitments in the bill. Read more

The lack of paid family leave, Democrats noted, has left the United States as the only wealthy country and one of the few countries in the world that does not pay women during maternity leave.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg suggested on Sunday that the fight for paid family leave was not over.

“It’s definitely something that we believe in, and so even if it’s not within that framework, we’re going to keep fighting for it,” Buttigieg told ABC News in an interview.

Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicut in Washington Editing by Bill Berkrot and Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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