House Appropriations rejects Kaptur amendment (allow competition for gov funded drugs if prices higher than reference countries)
On 19 July 2017, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) introduced an amendment at the markup in the U.S. House Appropriations Committee of the FY2018 State and Foreign Operations, Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bill that would direct the Department of Health and Human Services to use its authority to break patent monopolies for government-funded inventions priced higher in the U.S. than seven other high-income countries.
Senator Angus King proposed an amendment to National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require the Department of Defense (DoD) to authorize third parties to use inventions that benefited from DoD research funding, when prices exceed the median price charge in the seven largest economies with per capita incomes at least half the per capita income in the United States. 