Senator Hassan Applauds Senate and House Passage of Bipartisan Bill to Improve Medicaid

WASHINGTON – Senator Maggie Hassan, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, applauded the unanimous Senate passage yesterday of bipartisan legislation to help improve Medicaid, which includes a provision backed by Senator Hassan to close a loophole that allows the pharmaceutical industry to exploit taxpayer dollars. The bipartisan Medicaid Services Investment and Accountability Act of 2019 passed the House of Representatives last month and now heads to the President’s desk for a signature. 

The bipartisan Medicaid Services Investment and Accountability Act includes the Right Rebate Act, which Senator Hassan cosponsored. The Right Rebate Act will give Medicaid more tools to go after drug manufacturers that misclassify a drug as a generic when it should be a brand name. When a pharmaceutical company misclassifies a drug as a generic drug as part of the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program (MDRP), the company can pay less in rebates into the program and cheat taxpayers.

“This bipartisan bill will help hold pharmaceutical companies accountable and ensure that taxpayers dollars are used responsibly, and I urge President Trump to sign this commonsense legislation without delay,” Senator Hassan said.  

Senator Hassan is focused on taking real action to help lower the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs. She has cosponsored comprehensive legislation to lower drug costs, including by permitting the safe importation of prescription drugs from places like Canada and allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. The Senator has also worked to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable for its role in helping fuel the opioid crisis. Last month, she confronted a top Janssen Pharmaceuticals executive for the company’s role in helping fuel the opioid crisis and for promoting the dubious concept of “pseudoaddiction.” The Senator also successfully worked to include a measure she authored in the bipartisan SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act that is now law, which would crack down on bad actors in the pharmaceutical industry by strengthening the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) system for addressing suspicious orders of opioid-based prescription drugs from drug distributors and increasing penalties for bad actors in the pharmaceutical industry that fail to report suspicious orders to the DEA. 

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