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ChampionedHealth care / prescription drug prices

Pass legislation (the SMART Prices Act) to strengthen and expand Medicare's authority to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, covering more drugs and increasing the savings Medicare can negotiate.

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ChampionedFact-checker reviewConfidence: 90%

Independently verified. Klobuchar was the PRIMARY (first-named) sponsor of the Strengthening Medicare And Reducing Taxpayer Prices (SMART) Prices Act, S.1246 (118th Congress), introduced April 20, 2023 'by Ms. Klobuchar (for herself, Mr. Welch, and others)' — an even stronger role than the prior rating's 'lead co-introducer.' The bill would more than double the drugs Medicare must negotiate and accelerate negotiation timelines. She actively led the effort (well beyond a single supporting vote) and later reintroduced it (S.1836, 119th Congress, May 2025), but S.1246 was only 'read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance,' never advancing out of committee or becoming law. This matches CHAMPIONED (actively led/sponsored, not fully enacted). Nonpartisan check: a named primary sponsor whose bill dies in committee is the textbook CHAMPIONED case; FULL would require enactment, ATTEMPTED would be a mere vote — an opposite-party senator with this record would earn the identical label. All cited sources are real and live (Congress.gov returned 403 to automated fetch, a bot block, but the bill's existence and 'referred to the Committee on Finance' status are corroborated by GovTrack and multiple search snippets).

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