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Joyce’s bill aims to lower drug costs

U.S. Rep. John Joyce, 13th District, on Thursday introduced bipartisan legislation to reduce the costs of prescription drugs by making generic medicine more quickly accessible to consumers.

The Ensuring Timely Access to Generic Act of 2019 provides direction to the Federal Drug Ad­ministration on how to identify and deny citizen petitions that are used as tactics by brand drug manufacturers to delay cheaper generic medications from accessing the market.

A 2016 study in the American University Law Review found that: “Brand firms’ filing of citizen petitions with the FDA has almost entirely slipped beneath the radar. While citizen petitions in theory could raise concerns that a drug is unsafe, in practice they bear a dangerous potential to extend brand monopolies by delaying approval of generic.”

The empirical study of citizen petitions found that brand firms file 92 percent of the petitions.

“In short, citizen petitions represent a hidden tool in brands’ toolkit of entry-delaying activity, and when used inappropriately, force consumers to pay high drug prices while providing no offsetting safety benefit,” according to the study.

If Joyce’s legislation becomes law, the FDA will gain the authority to deny citizen petitions if it deems their primary purpose is a way to delay the approval of a drug’s transition to the generic marketplace.

“As a physician, I have watched patients struggle to afford the medications that they so desperately need, which is why one of my primary goals as a member of Congress is to lower the costs of prescription drugs,” a statement from Joyce read.

Joyce teamed up on the Ensuring Timely Access to Generics Act with Rep. Anthony Brindisi, D-N.Y., and the companion version of the bill was introduced in the Senate in April by Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.

“It is incredibly problematic that brand name drug companies have been able to avoid marketplace competition by utilizing illegitimate citizens petitions, and it’s time that we give our federal regulators the tools that they need to properly police the application process,” Joyce’s statement read. “I urge House leadership to take this bill up as soon as possible so consumers can spend less at the pharmacy and can keep more money in their wallets.”

Also on Thursday, Joyce voted against H.R. 9, the Climate Action Now Act, though it ultimately passed 231-190.

Those in favor of the bill said the vote sends a message that Americans want to build a clean energy economy.

When the bill was introduced in late March by the House Democratic majority, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: “The bill … is about jobs. It’s about good-paying green jobs. It’s about advancing our economy and our global preeminence in green technology. It’s about health, it’s about public health and clean air and clean water for our children … This is a national security issue. And for many of us, it’s a moral issue. If you do believe, as I do, that this is God’s creation, this planet, we have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of it.”

On Thursday after it passed the House, a statement from Joyce calling it “legislation that would force the United States to reduce its carbon emissions without any guarantee that competing economic countries will do the same. The measure would reinstitute the emission standards that President Obama agreed to under the Paris Agreement on climate change, a deal President Trump removed the United States from in June of 2017.”

Joyce’s statement noted that while the Paris Agreement required the United States to reduce carbon emissions in 2025 by 26 to 28 percent, China’s commitment to emission reductions would not have to be reached until 2030.

“When President Obama signed the Paris Agreement, he clearly did not understand the harm it would do to the manufacturers of southcentral Pennsyl­vania,” a statement attributed to Joyce read. “The workers of the 13th District overwhelmingly elected President Trump to remove them from bad deals that hurt their businesses and eliminate their jobs, and I do not support reentering this lopsided pact that is unfair to my constituents.”

Mirror Staff Writer Russ O’Reilly is at 946-7435.

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