SALEM — Sen. Jeff Merkley reintroduced a proposal Thursday, April 22, to force drug makers to sell prescription drugs at lower prices that are closer to what patients in other upper-income countries pay.

The Oregon Democrat hopes that will push the Biden administration to include the regulations in its soon-to-be-released American Families Plan.

“We have allowed Americans to be ripped off for far too long,” Merkley said April 22 in a call with reporters. “It’s an issue that no matter whether if I’m in a blue county or a purple county or a red county, citizens want us to address it.”

Merkley said he’s heard from constituents around the state about their struggles with high-priced pharmaceuticals, including a man in Douglas County whose daughter relies on a seizure medication that costs $45,000 a vial here, compared with $200 in Canada.

President Joe Biden is expected to unveil the plan focused on family leave, childcare, extending larger child tax credits and other policy priorities in the coming days, before he delivers an April 28 address to Congress.

“We expect major health care reforms to be part of that package,” Merkley said April 22. “This is the moment that we really have to press for getting this right, finally coming to the defense of Americans across the board.”

Merkley’s plan would require the secretary of Health and Human Services to set price caps for prescription drugs at the median retail list price in 11 other countries: Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden. The limits would apply in the private sector as well as for government health plans such as Medicare.

The senator pointed to insulin, developed 100 years ago by scientists in Canada, as emblematic of how Americans overpay for pharmaceuticals. “When you look at cost of insulin in America versus abroad, it’s just completely clear how much we’re getting gouged,” Merkley said. According to his office, insulin produced by Lantus SoloStar costs $373 per vial in the United States, compared with $47 in France and $61 to $67 in Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada.

With Biden’s family recovery plan estimated to cost $1 trillion, cutting prescription drug prices offers an opportunity to offset some of the costs. Politico reported last month that pharmaceutical industry lobbyists anticipated a greater likelihood drug price regulations could pass this year, given Democrats’ interest in the cost savings to government health care programs including Medicaid and Medicare.

Merkley’s proposal didn’t receive a fiscal analysis when he first introduced it in 2019. However, a bill introduced by House Democrats in the last Congress that would have required the federal government to negotiate certain drug prices could have saved taxpayers $456 billion over a decade, mostly through reduced Medicare spending, the Congressional Budget Office found. Workers could also benefit because employers would pass some of the savings from lower health insurance costs on in the form of higher wages, budget analysts wrote.

Oregon lawmakers are also considering a plan to have state regulators set upper limits on prescription drug prices. Legislatures across the nation have considered or are looking a similar approach, spurred by the federal government’s inaction on the issue. Senate Bill 844 , which has bipartisan sponsorship, is currently in the Ways and Means Committee, waiting for legislative budget writers to take it up.

Industry trade group PhRMA warned in ads targeting the Oregon drug pricing bill that capping what drug companies can charge could cause some of those companies to stop selling the medicines in the state. The group’s director of public affairs did not answer The Oregonian/OregonLive’s question about how price limits would lead to some medicines no longer being sold here; instead, she pointed to PhRMA’s ranking of the number of cancer drugs available in nearly two dozen countries that shows the United States gets much faster access to the treatments.

On April 22, Merkley dismissed the industry claim that price caps would slow the development and availability of pharmaceuticals in the United States. “It is a completely bogus argument,” he said. The senator said drug companies could offset deep reductions in U.S. drug prices with small increases in prices charged in other countries. “Their research budgets pale to their advertising budgets,” Merkley said.