Latest News

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Wednesday, Congressman Brett Guthrie (KY-02), who serves as the Chair of the Health Subcommittee on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Congressman Greg Murphy (NC-03), and Congressman Don Davis (NC-01) introduced the EPIC Act. This will change the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to ensure small and large molecule drugs are treated equally by the law and provide patients with the greatest opportunity to gain access to life-saving therapies.

 “We are at the cusp of a revolution in health care, thanks to the innovation happening right here in the U.S. Patients and their families rely on these life-saving products for a better quality of life and for more time with their families. Congress should be incentivizing investments in and development of cutting-edge therapies, not penalizing innovators for helping to drive real change in our health care system. The EPIC Act will ensure these life-saving products reach patients without picking winners and losers like the IRA currently does. I am proud to lead this bipartisan bill along with Congressmen Murphy and Davis and look forward to working with my colleagues toward advancing this bill,” said Congressman Guthrie.

Background

The Inflation Reduction Act currently provides the Centers for Medicare for Medicaid Services (CMS) the authority to negotiate the prices of drugs for small molecule drugs at 7 years with those prices going into effect at 9 years after they come to market. For large molecule drugs, or biologics, the IRA sets these timelines at 11 years to start the process and those prices would go into effect at 13 years post-market entry. This discrepancy is what’s known as the “pill penalty” and potentially picks winners and losers, which ultimately hurts patients the most.

The IRA arbitrarily picks winners and losers and forces innovators to make tough decisions about where to invest in their pipelines, which ultimately comes at the detriment to vulnerable patients who lack access to effective cures for debilitating disease, like cancers and other neurodegenerative conditions.

The EPIC Act would help address this critical issue by moving the statutory timeline for negotiation for small molecule drugs, which can often be more convenient for patients and more effective for certain diseases, in line with the large molecule timeline of 11 years. 

###