Because price controls are so authoritarianL Biden: Drug Companies Will Have to ‘Come to Us’ and ‘We Will Set the Price’

Biden: Drug Companies Will Have to ‘Come to Us’ and ‘We Will Set the Price’

By Craig Bannister | July 31, 2019 | 9:08 PM EDT 

Joe Biden

(Getty Images/Alex Wong)

Companies that develop drugs will have to go to the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) to be told what they’ll be allowed to charge for their products if Joe Biden is elected president, the former vice president declared Wednesday during the Democrat presidential debate.

Biden made the claim while defending his health care plan against the charge that it would not cover everyone in America, adding that his administration would also dictate any price increases:

“My plan does cover everyone, number one. Number two, the fact is that my plan also calls for controlling drug prices. The biopharma is now where things are going to go. It’s no longer chemicals.

“It's about all the breakthroughs we have with the whole -- excuse me, immune system.

“And, what we have to do now is we have to have a form that sits in the HHS and says: as you develop a drug, you got to come to us and decide what you can sell it for.

“We will set the price. And, secondly, it says that you cannot raise that price beyond the cost of inflation from this point on.”