East Idaho Times

During a U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearing on the health care provisions included in the partisan Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) highlighted the bill’s impact on Americans’ access to reliable, affordable health care, noting stifled pharmaceutical innovation and higher premiums caused by “heavy-handed government intervention” and “top-down, problematic overhauls.”

Crapo focused on the IRA’s drug price-fixing program and emphasized how the IRA is affecting American medical innovation, "with at least 21 drugs and 36 research programs discontinued since the law’s enactment," while systematically disadvantaging certain clinical breakthroughs, including oral cancer drugs and Alzheimer’s therapies. Crapo also called for Congress to deliver more productive, bipartisan health care solutions, stating, "Instead of perpetuating a tax-and-spend agenda, we can and should work together to improve health care choice, affordability and reliability."

Key Highlights:

“This Committee has proven that bipartisan consensus and deliberative policymaking can yield real solutions, from driving down prices at the pharmacy counter to ensuring patients can confidently select a mental health provider who fits their needs.

“Unfortunately, the IRA took the opposite approach, advancing top-down, problematic program overhauls through a rushed, partisan process that sidelined the minority and ignored constructive input.

“Bureaucratic price fixing under the guise of negotiation may sound appealing but it comes at a massive cost—particularly as firms begin to look elsewhere to launch new life-saving treatments.

“The implications for the therapeutic R&D pipeline are already apparent with at least 21 drugs and 36 research programs discontinued since the law’s enactment.

“Even for approved drugs delays and denials in care have started to skyrocket—and yet the Biden-Harris Administration inexplicably excluded medications from its prior authorization reforms.

“For Americans with rare diseases 95 percent of which lack an approved treatment—the IRA contains a rigid disincentive for finding new uses for existing orphan drugs.”

Crapo also highlighted that because the IRA’s heavy-handed government intervention has triggered annual premium increases for seniors, the Administration is now attempting to hide these increases through taxpayer-financed subsidies and legally dubious programs. Crapo recently joined Senate and House leaders in requesting a review and analysis from the Government Accountability Office and Congressional Budget Office on this new cost-shifting program.

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