In testimony before the House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions this afternoon, AAF President Douglas Holtz-Eakin discusses the challenges to prescription drug pricing.

His central points:

• The term “rising drug costs” is riddled with ambiguity; list prices, net prices, out-of-pocket prices, development costs, and total spending on drugs have displayed very different patterns over time;
• The provisions of Title I of H.R. 3 are far from a government “negotiation” and are a threat to the dynamic ecosystem that drives U.S. pharmacological innovation; and
• A superior approach would be the reforms to Medicare Part D in H.R. 19, a superior version of the reform in Title III of H.R. 3.