Federal Health Policy in Focus: Insights from Connecticut’s Congressional Delegation is a special editorial series from CT Health News designed to highlight the healthcare priorities of the members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation. The members of our delegation have been invited to share their perspectives on the federal policies and issues they believe should be top priorities for improving health and healthcare, both in Connecticut and across the nation. Through this series, CT Health News aims to provide Connecticut’s healthcare community with a window into how our state’s leaders in Washington are thinking about the future of healthcare and health policy.
We kick off the series by featuring insights from U.S. Representative Joe Courtney. Congressman Courtney has represented Connecticut’s Second Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2007. A senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, he serves as Ranking Member of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee and also sits on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Courtney has been a leading advocate for service members and veterans, helping expand Montgomery GI Bill benefits and extend TRICARE coverage to military families. He has also supported affordable higher education and championed policies benefiting Connecticut’s farmers and coastal economy. Before his election to Congress, Courtney served in the Connecticut General Assembly from 1987 to 1994, including as chair of the Public Health and Human Services Committees. He is a graduate of Tufts University and the University of Connecticut School of Law.
President Trump is Taking Credit for Lowering Drug Costs. He Should Join Democrats to Deliver Real Relief.
The Lowering Drug Costs for American Families Act would build on the Inflation Reduction Act to end big pharma price-gouging.
Opinion by Rep. Courtney
Americans are facing a cost-of-living crisis, and for many, the relentless increase in the cost of life-saving prescription drugs is, by far, the most terrifying threat to economic and health care security.
For years, big pharmaceutical companies have singled out American patients as a piggybank because of the lax price protections that our health care system allows to fester, unlike the rest of the developed world.
The result, according to polling by the nonpartisan group KFF, is that a quarter of U.S. adults face difficulty affording their medications and nearly a third of adults haven’t taken their medications as prescribed due to high costs, including delaying filling prescriptions, taking over-the-counter drugs instead of filling their prescriptions, and cutting pills in half or skipping doses.
In 2022, Congress passed and President Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which, after a 60-year political battle, finally took action to lower prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries: a $35/month cap on insulin costs, a $2,000/year cap on out-of-pocket drug costs, and the vesting of Medicare with the power to negotiate directly with drugmakers for lower costs on commonly used medications.
Two years later, Medicare drug price negotiation slashed the price of an initial list of 10 drugs used by over 100,000 seniors in Connecticut. The list prices of these drugs dropped by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Eliquis for example, a frequently prescribed blood thinner, had its price cut from $521 to $231.
While the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed without any Republican votes, there is overwhelming bipartisan support for price negotiations to lower prescription drug costs among the American people.
73% of Americans want more regulation to limit the price of prescription drugs, including 68% of Republicans, according to polling by KFF.
In 2025, when Congressional Republicans passed H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, it gutted huge portions of the IRA – with the notable exception of IRA Medicare drug price negotiations. Clearly, President Trump recognized the political danger of repealing this popular law which has given millions of Medicare patients real price relief.
Of course, in typical fashion, Trump is trying to rewrite history. Trump falsely claimed that he was responsible for the lower insulin costs mandated by the IRA, and the Trump Administration is now shamelessly boasting of the latest round of 2025 price reductions made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act.
If the White House and Republican leaders are truly serious about the affordability crisis, they should join Democrats to build on the success of the IRA by supporting H.R. 2554, the Lowering Drug Costs for American Families Act, a bill I co-sponsored in 2025 which would extend drug price negotiations for Medicare seniors to millions of working-age Americans covered in employment based insurance plans. This bill is based on a simple premise: namely, that lower Medicare drug prices should be available to all Americans, not just those on Medicare.
This bill also allows Medicare to negotiate more categories of medications each year and closes loopholes created by the Trump Administration that allow pharmaceutical companies to avoid price negotiation.
Widening the scope of price negotiation to millions of employer plans would benefit our entire health care system. Exorbitant drug prices result in higher monthly premiums, with the average employer premium today nearly four times what it cost 20 years ago.
Making lower prices available in the commercial market will help insurance plans and employers slow the rise in the monthly health premiums that everyone pays, not only those who need expensive drugs.
And for those who do need expensive prescription drugs, this bill would lower list prices and therefore lower the copayments patients pay for those specific drugs.
The American people have sent a clear message that they want Washington to bring down costs. Both parties have promised to do so. Now is the time to pass the Lower Drug Costs for American Families Act to deliver real relief.
