Sen. Bernie Sanders stated on Friday that the CEOs of Johnson & Johnson and Merck have voluntarily volunteered to appear at a forthcoming Senate hearing on excessive drug pricing in the United States, as lawmakers step up efforts to control the expense of health care for Americans.
- Important Points
- Sen. Bernie Sanders said that the CEOs of Johnson & Johnson and Merck have willingly consented to testify at a forthcoming Senate hearing on excessive medication pricing in the United States, following the panel’s planned votes to subpoena them.
- The hearing by the Senate Health Committee is set for February 8 at 10:00 a.m. ET.
- Chris Boerner, the CEO of Bristol Myers Squibb, and an unidentified CEO of a pharmaceutical company accepted the initial invitations to testify.
The hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labour and Pensions Committee is set for February 8 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Both J&J CEO Joaquin Duato and Merck CEO Robert Davis had already denied invitations to speak, so the panel was going to vote on whether to compel them to testify. The committee would have issued those subpoenas for the first time since 1981. Chris Boerner, the CEO of Bristol Myers Squibb, and an unidentified CEO of a pharmaceutical company accepted initial invitations to appear in the meanwhile.
Each executive will be asked to testify before the panel regarding the reasons for their companies’ noticeably higher U.S. drug pricing than those of other nations. Although the two major political parties have frequently supported differing strategies to achieve this, the drive to lower medicine prices is one of the few subjects that has brought them together in recent years.
Sanders, who chairs the Senate Health Committee, pointed out that all three firms manufacture some of the most expensive pharmaceuticals sold in the United States, including Merck’s diabetic medication Januvia, Johnson & Johnson’s blood cancer therapy Imbruvica, and Bristol Myers Squibb’s blood thinner Eliquis.
All three of these drugs will be subject to the first round of Medicare drug price negotiations, which is a crucial policy under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act aimed at making expensive medications more affordable to seniors. J&J, Merck, and Bristol Myers Squibb are all trying to block the negotiations, which will result in new prices that will take effect in 2026.
“I hope very much that the CEOs of these major pharmaceutical companies will take a serious look at these incredible price discrepancies and work with us to substantially reduce the prices they charge the American people for these and other prescription drugs,” Sanders said in a statement released on Friday.
In a statement, a spokesman for Merck said “we trust that this will be a productive hearing aimed at enhancing the committee’s understanding of the pharmaceutical industry and finding common sense solutions to the challenges facing patients.”
According to the spokeswoman, the business had offered its US president as a witness, suggesting that the figure was more suited to answering concerns about medicine price. But the committee declined. A spokeswoman for J&J stated that the business is looking forward to “building an understanding of our longstanding efforts to improve affordability and access to medicines.”
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