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drug prices
Senate Confirms 'Profoundly Unqualified' RFK Jr. to Lead Nation's Health Agencies
"No senator should have voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr.," said one consumer advocate.
Feb 13, 2025
The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to confirm vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to lead the nation's health policy, a move that one advocate said puts "our entire healthcare system and countless patient lives in jeopardy."
"This is a shameful day for the U.S. Senate, an institution that likes to laud itself for its careful deliberation and seriousness of purpose," said Robert Weissman, co-president of government watchdog Public Citizen. "No senator should have voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Every single senator knows he's not just profoundly unqualified to head the nation's health agency but a threat to public health in the nation."
Every Democratic senator voted against Kennedy's confirmation to lead President Donald Trump's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), while Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was the only Republican to oppose Kennedy. McConnell survived polio as a child and said Kennedy's "record of trafficking in dangerous conspiracy theories" about vaccines influenced his decision.
The confirmation followed Senate hearings in which Kennedy had nothing negative to say about the country's for-profit health insurance system, which has made insurers increasingly wealthy as patients' healthcare treatments are denied and delayed.
He insisted that Americans "would prefer to be on private insurance" and displayed a lack of knowledge about Medicaid and Medicare, appearing to confuse the two. He also denied being anti-vaccine while refusing to reject the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism, a failure that Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who is a physician, claimed to be troubled by—but Cassidy went ahead with his vote for Kennedy nonetheless.
"Senators who rubber stamp this dangerous nomination in fear of an angry tweet from President Trump cannot later feign concern and surprise when Kennedy's actions end up harming everyday Americans. They, too, will own the consequences."
"Any vote to confirm Kennedy to lead HHS is a vote to put our public health at risk, and senators know it," said Tony Carrk, executive director of government watchdog Accountable.US. "The war Kennedy is itching to wage against vaccines and scientific research will undoubtedly cost lives and could lead to the resurgence of diseases once thought dormant."
"Among the last people who should be overseeing our public health is Kennedy, with his non-existent health policy credentials, embrace of ludicrous conspiracies, and judgment so lacking that he potentially committed felony voter fraud despite courts warning him not to," Carrk added, referring to Accountable's accusation that Kennedy cast a ballot last year from an address that wasn't his. "Senators who rubber stamp this dangerous nomination in fear of an angry tweet from President Trump cannot later feign concern and surprise when Kennedy's actions end up harming everyday Americans. They, too, will own the consequences."
During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy angered officials in Samoa, where he spread anti-vaccine conspiracy theories just before 83 people died of measles in a 2019 outbreak. Samoa's director-general of health, Alec Ekeroma, accused Kennedy of "a total fabrication" when he told senators many of the people who died didn't have measles.
Before the Senate voted on Thursday, Ekeroma said Kennedy's confirmation to lead U.S. health agencies, which control funding for international health and vaccine initiatives as well as domestic policy, would be "a danger to us, a danger to everyone."
Weissman credited many Democratic senators for their "truly heroic efforts... to rally opposition against this dangerous nominee," and warned that "it will fall on the American people to confront his lies and policies and to defend basic public health principles and institutions."
"We should expect Robert F. Kennedy to continue spreading his conspiracies, anti-vaccine propaganda, and anti-science crusade," said Weissman. "We should expect him to deliver on his promises to sabotage our public health institutions. And we should expect him to enable and facilitate the effort to slash health care coverage for lower-income people, privatize Medicare, and undermine the subsidies and consumer protections on the Affordable Care Act exchanges."
Advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs noted that despite Kennedy's claim that he has "often disturbed the status quo by asking uncomfortable questions," he provided little information in his confirmation hearings about how he would challenge Big Pharma by lowering drug prices and defending the Medicare negotiations introduced by former President Joe Biden.
"Secretary Kennedy has a critical opportunity—and responsibility—to build on existing measures to rein in Big Pharma's price-gouging and lower drug costs for patients," said Merith Basey, the group's executive director. "We are ready to work with him to ensure Medicare drug price negotiations continue, out-of-pocket costs are reduced, and competition in the marketplace is increased through reforms to end abusive pharmaceutical monopolies that harm patients."
"But make no mistake," added Basey. "Patients fought hard to secure the 2022 prescription drug law, and we will fiercely oppose any efforts to weaken it."
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RFK Jr Pressed on Whether He and Trump Will 'Cave to Big Pharma' on Medicare Drug Prices
"Will you defend the law in the Inflation Reduction Act which already is negotiating prescription drug prices?" Sen. Bernie Sanders asked Kennedy during his second confirmation hearing.
Jan 30, 2025
Senate Democrats and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday pressed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department, to pledge that the new administration won't give in to the pharmaceutical industry's attacks on a popular Medicare drug price negotiation program that has already yielded significant results.
Sanders raised the matter during Kennedy's confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, on which the Vermont senator serves as the ranking member.
"Will you defend the law in the Inflation Reduction Act which already is negotiating prescription drug prices?" Sanders asked, referring to the Biden-era measure that empowered Medicare to negotiate the prices of a select number of prescription drugs directly with pharmaceutical companies.
Declining to provide a yes or no answer to Sanders' question, Kennedy replied that "President Trump wants us to negotiate drug prices" and added that, if confirmed as Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, he would "comply with the laws."
Watch:
The exchange came after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency within HHS, issued a statement Wednesday declaring that "lowering the cost of prescription drugs for Americans is a top priority of President Trump and his administration" and expressing commitment to "incorporating lessons learned to date from the [Inflation Reduction Act] program and to considering opportunities to bring greater transparency in the negotiation program."
"CMS intends to provide opportunities for stakeholders to provide specific ideas to improve the negotiation program, consistent with the goals of achieving greater value for beneficiaries and taxpayers and continuing to foster innovation," the agency added.
While some advocates for lower drug prices cautiously welcomed the CMS statement, Senate Democrats warned Thursday that its choice of language "appeared to open the door to Big Pharma's requests."
"If confirmed as secretary, you will be under tremendous pressure to cave to Big Pharma and undermine Medicare drug price negotiation Republicans have worked in lock-step with Big Pharma by relentlessly attacking Medicare drug price negotiation at every turn," a group of 12 Senate Democrats and Sanders wrote in a letter to Kennedy. "Now, Republicans have unified control of the federal government. They will undoubtedly try to leverage this power to walk back the progress Democrats made to lower drug prices through this important new authority."
The letter pushes Kennedy to answer a number of questions related to the drug price negotiation program, including whether he would recommend that the Trump administration defend the program from the pharmaceutical industry's ongoing legal assault.
"On behalf of the tens of millions of Americans who count on Medicare," the new letter states, "Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee want to know whether the Trump administration will follow through on negotiating with Big Pharma to deliver the lower costs promised to the American people."
After Trump announced his intent to nominate Kennedy as HHS chief late last year, the pharmaceutical lobby made clear its plan to push the new administration to undercut the price negotiation program that is poised to deliver billions of dollars in savings by bringing down the prices of expensive and widely used medications.
Earlier this month, the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly said his company and other drugmakers would ask the Trump administration to pause the price-negotiation program, claiming that "they need to fix it" before proceeding to talks over the next slate of 15 drugs selected in the final days of the Biden administration.
In their letter on Thursday, the senators demanded that Kennedy "confirm in writing" that he "will follow the law and reject
Big Pharma's request to pause Medicare drug price negotiation."
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You Don't Help Seniors by Cutting Medicaid, Social Security, or Medicare
And you don’t lower prices by giving giant tax cuts to billionaires and price gouging corporations.
Jan 29, 2025
Editor's note: The following is the prepared opening statement by the author as part of testimony for a hearing before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging—titled “Making Washington Work for Seniors: Fighting to End Inflation and Achieve Fiscal Sanity”—on Wednesday, January 29, 2025 .
Good afternoon, Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Gillibrand, and distinguished members of the committee.
As executive director of Social Security Works, I travel across the country speaking with legions of primarily older Americans. Almost to a person, they are concerned about rising prices. These rising prices hurt older adults, endangering their ability to afford food, housing, and prescription drugs. They want Congress to take action.
Across the country, there is widespread bipartisan agreement on what people want: cracking down on corporate price gouging, improving Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustments, which keep up with rising prices and currently under-measure seniors’ cost of living, and reducing the price of prescription drugs by expanding Medicare’s power to negotiate. These are actionable policies that will help older adults adjust to inflation caused by global supply chain shocks and greedflation—which has contributed to rising costs over the past few years. In fact, Federal Reserve research found that corporate profits accounted for all the inflation in the first year of the pandemic recovery and 41 percent of inflation overall in the first two years of the post-pandemic recovery.
There is bipartisan agreement across this country about what people don’t want in response to rising prices: Republicans, Independents, and Democrats all agree that not one single penny of cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits should be made. There is absolute bipartisan agreement among people everywhere across the country.
Despite this, the House Republican majority announced proposals to slash trillions from Medicaid, our country’s largest provider of long-term care. Over 9 million Americans over 65 rely on Medicaid.
Cuts to Medicaid would force these seniors, and their families, to pay enormous out of pocket costs for long-term care—money they don’t have. It would also force millions of caregivers, most often women, out of the workforce. This would make it far harder for American families to pay their monthly bills. In addition, these proposals also include cuts to SNAP benefits, which 4.8 million older Americans rely on to put food on the table.
Just last week, the new Trump Administration repealed an Executive Order from President Biden that directed the federal government to find ways to lower drug prices. The Trump administration is already favoring Big Pharma at the expense of seniors and working families.
There have also been calls by Republicans to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which gives Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices on key prescription drugs. This could force many seniors to cut their life-sustaining medications in half due to higher costs. Many others would face a terrible choice between buying food, filling their prescriptions, and paying their heating bills.
Even Social Security, the most popular and effective program in America, is not safe. Last month, a Republican representative, who is a member of the DOGE Caucus, told me personally that “there will be some cuts” to Social Security and Medicare.
Let me be clear: these proposed cuts will do nothing to lower costs for average Americans or older adults; these cuts are being proposed to offset the cost of tax handouts for billionaires and corporations, who have already been shown to be responsible for rising costs. This Congress should value the interests of older adults above the wealthiest, and I hope that the Aging Committee will lead that charge.
Consider this: If an older adult can’t afford their drugs and groceries at the average Social Security benefit of $1900 a month, it is absolute fiscal insanity to think the solution is to cut their income! To take away their health care! To destroy Medicaid and force them to pay the average long-term care cost of around $100,000 per year! If they can’t afford the price of eggs, it is absolute fiscal insanity to believe they can afford them better without SNAP benefits.
I’m here to deliver a message to the members of this committee from older Americans across the country: You don’t lower prices by stealing health care. You don’t lower prices by giving giant tax cuts to billionaires and price gouging corporations. And you absolutely don’t lower prices by reducing the Social Security and other benefits that adults have worked their entire lives for.
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