The Miami Herald on Friday published two opinion pieces about a bill passed last month by the House that would require the HHS secretary to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies on prices for medications under the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Summaries appear below.

• Sarah Berk, Miami Herald: "Medicare Part D is a success, yet for its own political gain the new Democratic leadership in Congress seems intent on risking seniors' access to prescription drugs and expanded medical benefits" with the bill, Berk, executive director of Health Care America, an advocacy group financed by pharmaceutical and other health care companies, writes in a Herald opinion piece. "Congress has always wasted money and riled taxpayers when it has tried to fix something that really isn't broken," Berk writes, adding, "Price controls dictated by a seemingly benevolent government invariably wreak havoc -- restricting vital and necessary choices for consumers, lowering overall quality of services and all too often driving prices up, not down" (Berk, Miami Herald, 2/2).
  
  
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Miami Herald: The "country did not get a fair deal in 2003 when Congress passed the Medicare Part D prescription drug program" because the law does not allow the federal government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies on prices for medications, Klobuchar writes in a Herald opinion piece. The "pharmaceutical industry has fired up its lobbying machine" to oppose legislation and "ignores promising negotiation approaches that don't limit the drugs available to seniors and don't involve price setting," Klobuchar writes, adding, "In lifting the ban, we will give seniors access to the drugs they need and the same broad range of plans," and the "outcome will be a fair, common sense approach to delivering affordable drugs to our seniors" (Klobuchar, Miami Herald, 2/2).