Seniors Speak Out Statement on Senate HELP hearing: “Making Health Care Affordable: Solutions to Lower Costs and Empower Patients.”

August 1, 2025—Seniors Speak Out, a national healthcare policy advocacy group, issued the following statement on the Senate HELP hearing: “Making Health Care Affordable: Solutions to Lower Costs and Empower Patients.”

“Lowering drug prices is essential to ensuring a fair and equitable healthcare experience, especially for the millions of American seniors who depend on Medicare for care and treatment access. However, instituting government drug price-setting, as some committee members propose to do, would undermine the flexibility and variety of treatments that seniors enjoy with their Medicare plans.

“We’re already seeing this concern come to life with the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is raising premiums while driving off investments in future medical discoveries. Not to mention, price-setting policies like Most Favored Nations utilize discriminatory value assessments that deprioritize care to the sickest patients, including the elderly. America’s seniors can’t afford significant changes in their treatment plans or spikes in care costs, which is why these overreaching policies are so devastating. Seniors Speak Out encourages U.S. Senators to rethink government price-setting policies that ultimately put seniors at risk and instead prioritize policies that strengthen the healthcare options they can access.”