Sen. Joe Manchin (D. W. Va) blamed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz) at a roundtable Friday for not allowing Democrats to do more on prescription drug pricing reform in the Inflation Reduction Act.
“We had a senator from Arizona who basically didn’t let us go as far as we needed to go with our negotiations [on drug pricing] and made us wait two years,” Manchin said in a video from the event. “Those type of things — I don’t question anybody, everyone’s responding to their own constituent base. But we did get something. And it’s the first time we made a positive move in that.”
The bill allows Medicare to negotiate the cost of 10 drugs in 2026. But many Democrats wanted to begin earlier and give the government broader power to negotiate prices with the industry. However, Sinema reined them in, according to NBC News.
Manchin’s spokesperson later tried to walk back his comment Friday, saying: “Senator Manchin misspoke this morning about Senator Sinema’s involvement in negotiating the 2 year delay for drug pricing negotiations.”
President Joe Biden signed the bill into law at the White House this week and even though it did not go as far on prescription drug pricing reform as Manchin would have wanted, it still accomplishes some of the president’s main legislative items. It is the largest climate investment in American history, it allows Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and extending ACA subsidies for three more years through 2025 and caps insulin out-of-pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries at $35/month . The law also includes a new corporate minimum tax of 15 percent, funding for IRS enforcement, and a new 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks.
“With this law, the American people won and the special interests lost,” Biden said at the signing ceremony. “For a while people doubted whether any of that was going to happen, but we are in a season of substance.”
