White House Insists It Didn't Give Away The Store To Big Pharma

by Sam Stein

In the latest in a series of conflicting statements, White House officials on Monday insisted that they never entered into a deal with pharmaceutical companies whereby they agreed not to allow the government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare.

In a briefing with mostly new media reporters, three senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity pushed back against reports that the White House had made such a pledge in return for $80 billion in promised cost savings over ten years.

"There was no discussion" of refraining from using the government's purchasing power to lower prices, said one of those aides. "It just didn't come up," said another.

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