Let’s lower prescription drug prices by holding Big Pharma accountable and cracking down on their schemes to slow generic drug approvals. Fix the FDA bureaucracy and accelerate approval of generics, and new drugs too.
Lower prescription drug prices by holding Big Pharma accountable, cracking down on tactics that delay generic approvals, and speeding FDA approval of generics and new drugs.
Occurrences
We also need to take a hard look at the bad trade deals that let foreign governments pay less for prescription drugs and shift research and development costs to Americans.
Evidence
Hawley joined the Transparent Drug Pricing Act of 2019, saying the bill would lower prescription drug prices through greater price transparency and by ensuring Americans pay the same price as consumers in other parts of the world.
Hawley unveiled the Fair Prescription Drug Prices for Americans Act and said his agenda would target the biggest abuses in the prescription drug market to reduce costs for patients.
Congress.gov shows Hawley introduced S.1218 and referred it to the Senate HELP Committee; the bill status is Introduced and the latest action is referral on 2023-04-19.
Hawley said Big Pharma uses anticompetitive patent thickets to drive up drug costs and prevent generic-drug manufacturers from entering the market, and he backed bipartisan legislation to break up those practices.
Congress.gov records that S.2276, the ETHIC Act, was introduced and referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, with no later legislative action shown on the history page.
Congress.gov lists S.1587 as introduced by Sen. Hawley and referred to the Senate HELP Committee on 2025-05-05; the tracker remains at Introduced.
Assessments
Hawley made repeated later-term Senate efforts aligned with the promise, including coauthoring or introducing bills on drug pricing, international price parity, and patent-thicket/generic competition issues. However, the evidence shows those measures remained introduced or referred to committee rather than enacted, and no cited evidence establishes that Hawley delivered the promised outcome of lower prescription drug prices through accountability measures, faster generic approvals, or FDA approval changes. Because there was serious legislative effort but no delivered policy result attributable to him, this is best scored as a failed promise with effort credit.