HEALTH

Phil Bredesen holds Knoxville 'roundtable' to discuss plans for lowering prescription drug rates

Senate candidate Phil Bredesen, left, speaks with about 20 people during a roundtable Wednesday at Bistro at the Bijou in downtown Knoxville.

Is it the role of Congress to negotiate the price of prescription drugs for American citizens?

Senate candidate Phil Bredesen, a former governor of Tennessee, floated that idea before about 20 people of various occupations and political parties Wednesday afternoon at the Bistro at the Bijou restaurant downtown. 

Arranged by lawyer Celeste Herbert and Bistro proprietor Martha Boggs, it was one of several "roundtable" discussions Bredesen is having throughout the state.

This one focused on his proposed policy for reducing prescription drug prices, which he first announced last week at Nashville's Economic Club. It involves repealing the Non-Interference Clause to allow the government to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies — and asking the companies for a "most favored nation" status based on America's large-scale purchase of drugs through programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration. 

"Most favored nation" is an economic position in which a country has the best trade terms given by its trading partner. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the United States spent $328.6 billion on prescription drugs in 2016 — and spends more than twice as much on average per person than most other developed countries.

"We are the biggest purchaser of drugs in the world, and yet we pay more," Bredesen said.

Moreover, in Tennessee, which did not expand Medicaid, many people are paying full-price for drugs, he added.

As an example, Bredesen noted that in 2015 a monthly supply of the prescription statin drug Crestor, which lowers the amount of cholesterol the liver produces, cost $25 in Europe — but $214 in the United States. Swedish-British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca makes the drug.

"I'd much rather cut into the profit of a Swedish company than ask someone on Medicare to give up their benefits," Bredesen said.

He said other countries should "pay their share" of the research done in the United States to ensure drugs' safety. 

Knoxville city law director Charles Swanson, who attended the roundtable, said the city pays $4.5 million a year in prescription drug costs for its 1,550 employees, "and it's going higher every year, at a much greater rate than our health-care costs are going up.

"There are a lot of things we could do with those dollars that would be good for our community," Swanson said. 

David Belew, who owns a chain of four local drugstores, told Bredesen at the roundtable that any plan to reduce prescription drug costs should also look at pharmaceutical benefits management companies. Belew said the three largest PBMs handle the majority of drug benefits — but have an "opaque" relationship with pharmaceutical companies that benefit the PBMs over the consumers and health-care providers. 

"I fill just shy of 30 percent of prescriptions at a loss," Belew said. "That’s a dead net loss. I do that because we provide health care for Knoxvillians."

Bredesen acknowledged policy change typically happens slowly and reiterated the need for bipartisanship, a theme of his campaign.

At the roundtable, he also touched on what he called other "big ideas": revamping the student loan program, balancing the federal budget with a six-year plan, and contracting TVA to expand broadband internet access into rural areas

Bredesen did not mention his Senate opponent Marsha Blackburn during the roundtable, though his campaign sent a news release reiterating Blackburn's sponsorship of a 2015 bill that increased access to medications, in part by reducing the federal Drug Enforcement Agency's authority to freeze shipments of drugs it deemed dangerous to communities. That release also outlines contributions by the pharmaceutical industry to Blackburn between 1991-2018 and notes Blackburn voted against the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act of 2007.

When asked for comment about Bredesen's proposed prescription drug prices policy, Blackburn campaign spokesman Abbi Sigler dismissed the policy as "just another phony political stunt" and did not address specifics, instead focusing on Bredesen's contribution to Hillary Clinton during the last presidential election and saying he wants "big government control."