(Washington, D.C.) - Today, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, released the following statement in response to President Trump’s speech on lowering drug prices.
“Families want action now to reduce drug costs and help them afford the prescriptions they need, but since talking a big game about taking on drug prices as a candidate, President Trump has been all tweets and no leadership for more than a year-while prices for patients keep on rising. In fact, rather than helping people afford their prescriptions, he and Congressional Republicans instead handed pharmaceutical companies billions in tax breaks that they used to pad their bottom line instead of helping lower drug costs for regular families. Democrats have put forward strong, commonsense proposals like allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower prices-and we are here and ready to work with President Trump and Republicans if they are serious about substantial steps to follow through on this speech’s promises. Until then, this speech was simply more of the same from a President who hasn’t done the work and hasn’t delivered."