Washington, DC - Energy and Commerce Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) sent a letter to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma today expressing concern about CMS’s failure to update the Drug Spending Dashboards since the Trump Administration began. The Dashboards are online interactive tools that give the public critical access to information on how much the government spends for certain prescription drugs in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Pallone noted in the letter that he is particularly concerned by CMS’s failure to update the Dashboards since doing so would not require a significant commitment of agency time or resources. Niall Brennan, who formerly served as the Chief Data Officer of CMS and created the Dashboards during his tenure at the agency, told CNN he designed the program to make the subsequent release of data very easy, saying, “the code is written" and “this would be one of the first examples of [CMS] not updating one of the existing data sources."
“During his 2018 State of the Union, President Trump reiterated his commitment to ‘fixing the injustice of high drug prices,’ which he described as ‘one of [his] greatest priorities.’ However, reports that the Trump Administration has neglected the Dashboards under your authority appear to contradict this promise," Pallone wrote to CMS Administrator Verma. “The failure to update the Dashboards raises questions about this Administration’s supposed commitment to lowering the price of prescription drugs for the American people."
The Dashboards are used by researchers, journalists, and non-profit groups to monitor trends in drug prices - including the average annual beneficiary cost and the annual change in the average cost per unit of tracked prescription drugs - and have been praised for providing greater drug pricing transparency to consumers and promoting public accountability.
Pallone is requesting the following information from Administrator Verma by April 20, 2018:
* According to reports, the Dashboards are typically updated each November with data from the preceding calendar year. Please provide a written explanation justifying why the Dashboards were not updated with 2016 data in November 2017. As part of this explanation, please also indicate if and when the agency intends to update the Dashboards with 2016 data.
* At any point during the tenure of the Trump Administration, were CMS employees instructed not to proceed with updating the Dashboards with 2016 data? If so, who gave this instruction?
* At any point during the tenure of the Trump Administration, did any CMS employees express concern regarding the agency’s failure to update the Dashboards with 2016 data?
* Please provide any communications between CMS and/or employees of CMS and outside advocacy or lobbying organizations that pertain to the updating of the Dashboards with 2016 data.
* Please provide in electronic form the 2016 underlying data for the Medicare and Medicaid Drug Spending Dashboards.
