The House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday approved several bills designed to enhance prescription drug competition.
Details: This includes the CREATES Act, which received bipartisan buy-in after relatively minor changes were made to the original version.
That bill would allow generics manufacturers to sue brand-name drugmakers for access to the samples they need for approval, although the new version offers more protections to brands.
The committee also passed a bill that makes it illegal for branded companies to pay generic companies to stay off the market.
The big picture: CREATES is expected to save the federal government $3.9 billion over 10 years, a fraction of the $100 billion spent on Medicare's prescription drug benefit alone in 2017.
But Congress has thus far struggled to do much of anything, and the push to reduce drug prices has to start somewhere.
