Nicole Gaudiano

USA TODAY

Rep. Elijah Cummings said Tuesday he will meet with President Trump sometime next week to discuss the rising cost of prescription drug prices, something Trump has vowed to fix.

Trump, at his news conference earlier this month, accused Cummings — the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — of bowing out of a meeting because it would be bad for Democrats politically. Cummings responded that he had “no idea why President Trump would make up a story about me.”

Cummings, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and others said that Trump needs to prove his commitment to solving the problem by backing a bill they introduced Tuesday to drive down prices by importing drugs from Canada and other countries.

“Now it is time for him to put up or shut up,” said Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. “It’s time for him to join with us or in my opinion to confess his lie to the American people.”

Sanders noted that Trump has said the pharmaceutical industry is “getting away with murder.”

“Now is the time for him to step up to the plate,” he said.

Trump has said Americans could save hundreds of billions if Medicare were allowed to negotiate prices with drug companies — a position Democrats have supported for years — and he has decried the influence of pharmaceutical industry lobbying in Congress. But he seemed to satisfy drugmakers in a recent meeting by saying he would support lower taxes and streamlined regulations, though he told them they need to create U.S. jobs.

Cummings said Tuesday he's looking forward to the meeting. He just has to plan it around his town hall meeting on protecting the Affordable Care Act, he said. He previously said he was not ready to meet with Trump until he had legislation to discuss.

The bill’s 19 co-sponsors are all Democrats and independents, but drug importation isn’t a party-line issue.

Last month, Sanders slammed 13 Senate Democrats in an interview with USA TODAY for lacking the “guts” to stand up to the pharmaceutical industry when he and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., proposed the idea as an amendment to a 2017 budget resolution. It failed 52-46, with a dozen Republicans voting in favor.

Three of the Democrats who voted no — Booker, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico — signed on to the bill after safety measures were included.

But the nonpartisan Pew Charitable Trusts on Tuesday raised public health and safety concerns about importing drugs in a letter to Sanders. Allan Coukell, the organization’s senior director of Health Programs, said the safety measures weren’t enough to ensure the security of the U.S. supply chain.

“This poses a safety risk with respect to imported product, but also undermines the entire system, which depends on being able to flag non-compliant product as being potentially counterfeit or otherwise illegal,” Coukell wrote.

Read more:

Rep. Cummings: 'I have no idea why' Trump made up story about me

Slammed by left, Booker to join Sanders on drug imports