Iowa Senate candidate Hinson received $26,000 from pharmaceutical companies, records show

Over the last two years, Iowa Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson has received $26,000 in donations from political action committees representing pharmaceutical companies, federal campaign finance records show.

Hinson, the Republican nominee for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat, has voted against legislation designed to lower consumer drug prices. 

Federal Election Commission records show Hinson’s campaign has taken donations ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 from political action committees, or PACs, associated with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies such as Abbott Laboratories, Amgen and Bayer. 

Hinson’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. 

Hinson is running against Democratic nominee Josh Turek, a state representative. None of the seven PACs that have given the total of $26,000 to Hinson’s campaign appear to have donated money to Turek. 

Hinson’s campaign website says she has worked across the aisle to lower prescription drug prices. Specifically, among its bullet points under the heading “Healthcare” is “Lower prescription drug costs by increasing transparency and holding pharmacy benefit managers accountable.”

“We have to take a look at what the key drivers for healthcare costs are,” Hinson told CBS affiliate KGAN in Cedar Rapids in May. “Big Pharma and Big Insurance, are they taking advantage? How can we keep putting pressure on the middlemen who are taking more cuts?” She said that she’d worked to make sure pharmaceutical company rebates are paid to pharmacies “so that the local pharmacies in our rural communities can stay in business”; she said the rebates would lower consumer prices. She also said that President Donald Trump “is taking action by getting these big pharmaceutical companies that have been taking advantage of people for years to the table to lower the prices for prescription drugs.”

But Hinson, who has been in the House of Representatives since 2021, voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, provisions of which aimed to lower prescription drug costs. Specifically, the law limited monthly out-of-pocket payments for insulin to $35 for people with Medicare. It also authorized the federal government to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries. 

“This bill ignores the pain that Iowans are feeling,” Hinson said on the House floor during debate on the Inflation Reduction Act. “It’s the worst policy at the worst possible time. I urge a no vote on this latest tax-and-spending spree.”

From 2012 to 2021, the price of a 30-day supply of insulin increased 184%, rising from $271 to $499, according to the nonprofit Health Care Cost Institute. 

A study from Johns Hopkins researchers published in March found that the out-of-pocket caps on insulin successfully brought down insulin prices. In 2019, the percentage of patients with at least one claim for insulin who paid $35 or less for a 30-day equivalent supply was 48%. That percentage jumped to 75% in 2023, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 

“This is compelling evidence that Medicare policies in recent years have done what they were meant to do—improve insulin access and affordability,” Michael Fang, the study’s lead author, told the school’s media team. “Insulin costs are now at historically low levels for people on Medicare.”

The story on the school’s website notes that the study is thought to be the first of its kind to analyze the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act’s insulin cap.