House to Vote on Drug Pricing Bill Related to Medicaid Rebates

The House is slated to vote next week on a measure that would punish drugmakers trying to game Medicaid’s rebate system to garner bigger profits, Bloomberg Government’s Alex Ruoff reports.

The drug pricing provisions in the measure (H.R. 7217), introduced Dec. 6 by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), would allow the federal government to levy fines against pharmaceutical companies that misrepresent their products to avoid higher rebates. The House measure contains a number of health-care provisions in addition to drug pricing control language from a bill introduced a day earlier in the Senate.

The Senate bill was introduced by Sens. Chuck ...