WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT) has been appointed chair of Health Care Task Force of the House Budget Committee.
“If we are to get our fiscal house in order,” Moore explains after being named as chairman of the congressional panel on April 4, “we have to tackle health care spending, which has ballooned to nearly 30 percent of our more than $6 trillion budget.”
Moore’s staff here in Washington say that the task force will build on earlier accomplishments of the 118th Congress by examining opportunities to modernize and personalize the health care system to increase patient access to quality, affordable care.
The Health Care Task Force is intended to serve as a policy incubator by holding member roundtable discussions with the Congressional Budget Office and stakeholders to find new ways to improve health outcomes while reducing federal spending.
One of Moore’s initial areas of focus on the panel will be examining the budgetary effects of fighting chronic diseases.
One of the top priorities for House Republicans in that regard is eliminating the so-called “Biden Pill Penalty.”
“Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) broke Medicare, leading to skyrocketing health care costs,” the Utah congressman told his 1st District constituents in a recent mailer. “Seniors are now at risk of losing access to new, lifesaving treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s diabetes and other diseases.”
One of the unintended consequences of the Biden era IRA legislation is that it grants a longer exception from price controls to large molecule drugs – that is, biologics – compared to small molecule drugs or pills.
That legislation allows for small molecule drugs (pills) to be subject to government price-setting nine years after they are approved, while granting injected or infused biologics an additional four years before those controls take effect.
The EPIC Act – which is short for the Ensuring Pathways to Innovative Cures Act — is a bipartisan piece of legislation introduced by Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC), a North Carolina physician.
The EPIC Act seeks to equalize this by granting small molecule drugs the same 13-year exemption period as biologics, encouraging continued research and development in small molecule medicines.
Some 82 percent of American seniors are reported to be in favor of eliminating the “Biden Pill Penalty,” according to a recent study by the McLaughlin & Associates group.
“I look forward to leading the Budget Committee’s Health Care Task Force … to find ways we can improve health care outcomes while reducting costs for both the partient and the taxpayer,” Moore says of his new appointment.
“This task force will be instrumental in addressing our healt care cost inefficiencies to ensure we can take care of patient needs and lower his massive budgetary line item,” he adds.