Chuck Grassley: “The fact is that the Government does not negotiate prices, it sets prices. The second thing is that we set in place in…”

“The fact is that the Government does not negotiate prices, it sets prices. The second thing is that we set in place in the Medicare bill plans to negotiate prices, and we know now from experience, and I did not know it when this amendment was offered before, that these plans are negotiating prices that are much lower for beneficiaries and the taxpayers than we even anticipated when we passed the bill 2 years ago. One thing that ought to be taken into consideration is the fact that there is no savings from this amendment. I would like to quote from The Washington Post, February 17: Governments are notoriously bad for setting prices, and the U.S. Government is notoriously bad at setting prices in the medical realm. We need to defeat this amendment as we defeated it a few months ago.”