WASHINGTON — Top Senate Democrats on Wednesday released an updated plan aimed at lowering the cost of prescription drugs, signaling progress on a crucial piece of their bid to salvage some of President Biden’s stalled social safety net, climate and tax bill.
Democratic leaders negotiated the drug-pricing proposal primarily with Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a conservative-leaning Democrat who abruptly walked away from talks on Mr. Biden’s marquee domestic policy bill in December, effectively stopping it in its tracks.
They released the plan this week in an attempt to smooth the path for a scaled-down tax and climate spending package they hope to push through the Senate as early as this month over Republican opposition. It would be paid for in part by the prescription drug proposal that is projected to save the government tens of billions of dollars in the coming years.
Under the new measure, Medicare would for the first time be allowed to directly regulate prescription drug prices. It would cap the out-of-pocket amount that Medicare patients can be asked to pay for prescription drugs at $2,000 a year, limit the amount drug companies can increase prices each year, and make more vaccines free for those patients, according to a draft put forward on Wednesday.
Its release was the most substantial progress in months toward reviving parts of Mr. Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar plan, coming after a painstaking set of closed-door talks in which leading Democrats have worked to accommodate the preferences of Mr. Manchin and other centrists in the Senate.
With Republicans expected to be uniformly opposed, it would need the support of every Democrat to move forward in the evenly divided Senate under special budget rules that could shield it from a filibuster.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has privately expressed a desire to vote on such a bill by late this month. Some aides and lawmakers remain skeptical that Democrats can coalesce behind one less than six months before the midterm elections, amid persistent worries about rising inflation.
Ahead of a planned August recess, Democrats are also juggling a tight time frame to pass sweeping manufacturing and technology legislation intended to boost American competitiveness with China and public pressure to respond to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that granted a constitutional right to an abortion.
In a bid to begin clearing procedural hurdles and pave the way for quick action if a broader deal can be reached, top Democrats on Wednesday asked the Senate parliamentarian to begin reviewing the updated version of the drug pricing plan, according to an official familiar with the private discussions who divulged them on the condition of anonymity. Because Democrats plan to use the fast-track budget process known as reconciliation, the measure must adhere to the strict limits enforced by the Senate’s top rules official.
The drug price regulation proposal was a cornerstone of the Build Back Better Act, Mr. Biden’s signature $2.2 trillion plan that encompassed much of his domestic agenda. It cleared the House in November with only Democratic votes but stalled a month later after Mr. Manchin declared he could not support such a sprawling and expensive package as inflation began to climb.
Mr. Manchin has repeatedly said any package must be focused on reducing the national debt, tackling the costs of prescription drugs and undoing pieces of the tax law Republicans muscled through in 2017. And while he opposed key pieces of his party’s ambitious plans to address climate change, Mr. Manchin has signaled openness to including a climate and clean energy tax package in his talks with Mr. Schumer.
“Senator Manchin has long advocated for proposals that would lower prescription drug costs for seniors, and his support for this proposal has never been in question,” said Sam Runyon, a spokeswoman….
Read More: Democrats Offer Plan to Cut Drug Costs, Seeking Climate and Tax Deal