This morning, we brought you a proposal from one US Senator for slashing the deficit that involves reworking Medicare pricing and pharmacy benefit transparency, among other things (see this). Now, the House Democrats have offered up their own set of recommendations and they largely mirror what President Barack Obama has already proposed.

To wit, the House Energy and Commerce Committee would reinstate rebates for so-called dual eligibles - low-income people who would be eligible for Medicare and Medicaid - and argues this would save taxpayers $135 billion over 10 years. Another item on the wish list (read the letter) is restricting pay-to-delay patent settlements between brand-name and generic drugmakers. The US Federal Trade Commission has long sought to limit these deals (look here).

These are not new suggestions, of course, and are repeated, in fact, by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which would also like to allow the US Department of Health & Human Services to negotiate discounts for Medicare Part D drugs.

“A series of reports by the Oversight Committee identified the inability of the private Medicare Part D plans to negotiate for low drug prices and concluded that allowingthe Secretary to negotiate on behalf of tens of millions of Medicare enrollees could cut drug costs and save taxpayers billions of dollars,” the committee writes in its letter to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

The amount of savings was not specified, but President Barack Obama last month suggested the pharmaceutical industry cough up $135 billion by agreeing to negotiate Part D discounts (see this). And the Oversight Committee also cited an Obama proposal to reduce exclusivity on biologics from 12 years to seven years.

scissors pic thx to leonid mamchenkov on flickr