James Shehan, JD: Congressional Concern Over Drug Pricing

James Shehan, JD, chair of regulatory practice at Lowenstein Sandler, LLP, discusses recent congressional interest in drug pricing.

Transcript:

Have you noticed any trends in congressional concern over drug pricing?

When we talk about Congress, the interesting thing is that I think you could sum up Congress over the last decade or more as “all talk and no action,” which is interesting because drug pricing being such an issue in American politics and being something that where there is a reasonable amount of consensus across the parties that drug prices are too high, but Congress has been singularly unable to do much of anything about it, which also is interesting when you see that the administration actually is doing something about it and with all the irony of it being a Republican administration.

And maybe there’s going to be more action in the coming Congress that starts sitting in January [2019], but I think it’s going to be, again, more talk and less action particularly with 1 party controlling each house.