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AARP to Lawmakers: Act Now to Lower Drug Prices

Prescription drugs on a hundred dollar bill

Americans pay three times more than people in other countries for the same prescription drugs, and we’re urging elected officials to do their part to bring prices down, especially as inflation stresses the budgets of millions of Americans.

Martha Cranley, our Wisconsin state director, authored an op-ed Thursday urging Congress to pass legislation that would lower drug costs. AARP is fighting to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug costs, cap out-of-pocket expenses on prescriptions and penalize drug companies that raise prices faster than the rate of inflation, among other measures that passed the House last year but have yet to be approved by the Senate. “For any senator concerned about inflation, lowering drug prices should be at the top of their to-do list,” Cranley wrote in the Milwaukee Community Journal.

And in Nevada, AARP State President Charlie Shepard issued a similar call, saying the U.S. Senate has an “opportunity to fix the unfair system that’s rigged against Americans.” “Every day we hear from older Nevadans who are forced to choose between paying for the medicines they need and paying for other essentials like food and heat,” she wrote in an on-ed in the Reno Gazette Journal.

An estimated 3.5 million Americans age 65 and older struggled to afford the prescriptions they needed in 2019, according to a report published earlier this year by the Department of Health and Human Services. Learn more about how we’re fighting to lower prescription drug prices.

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