U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., has announced that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on prescription drug prices.
The hearing will be Wednesday, according to a news release from Welch’s office. The announcement comes less than a week after Welch and a colleague wrote a letter to the committee chair raising questions about the cost of EpiPen.
The committee has already sought information from Mylan, the manufacturer of the EpiPen. The state of Vermont has also sought justification for the device’s sharp price increase.
“Prescription drugs can be lifesaving and pain-relieving, but the skyrocketing prices are killing consumers,” Welch said in the news release this week. “Meanwhile, big pharmaceutical corporations are raking in record profits.”
“It is a bipartisan responsibility to ensure no parent has to lose a child because they can’t afford medication,” he said. “I look forward to working with my committee colleagues to find bipartisan solutions to fix this broken market.”
In January, Welch announced that he and a congressman from Texas would lead a Drug Price Task Force in the House of Representatives that would encourage legislation to lower prescription drug prices.
In September, he and others introduced a bill in Congress to improve price transparency in the federal Medicare program and to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, which it is currently prohibited from doing.
Welch has also criticized the drugmaker Pfizer for seeking to use a so-called inversion as a way to avoid federal taxes. He testified in front of the Vermont Legislature in January, advocating for state action on prescription drug price transparency, which became law in June.
