WASHINGTON — Citing Texans’ complaints of soaring prescription costs, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett is leading an effort in Congress seeking causes and remedies.

Doggett, D-Austin, has formed an entity called the Prescription Drug Pricing Task Force, and one of the initial efforts is pressuring the Obama administration to use its authority to stem an ongoing rise in the costs of pharmaceuticals.

Recent cases of dramatic price increases — like the $84,000 hepatitis C treatment — are drawing attention. But Doggett and allies point to price boosts for many drugs, evidenced in a government study last week showing a 12.2 percent increase last year in prescription drug spending. That was a five-fold increase over the 2013 rate.

“Exorbitant drug prices are not just about one company or one outlier, not just about generics or one brand. They’re about a pervasive, systemic problem that is a pocketbook issue for American families, especially for seniors on a fixed income,” Doggett said.

Critics point to several causes, among them a shortage of innovation and the wave of mergers and acquisitions that have reduced competition.

The effects are being felt not just by consumers but in Medicare and Medicaid programs paying for many prescriptions.

Leigh Purvis, director of Health Services Research at AARP's Public Policy Institute, has been studying drug pricing since 2004.

“This is a long-term trend that shows no signs of slowing. It’s just reaching a point when people can’t afford their medicines,” she said in an interview.

She added: “There’s nothing in the U.S. health care system to stop it.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., referred to Doggett last week as “a champion on this issue.” She remarked on a shortcoming of the new health insurance law with regard to prescription medicine.

“When we passed the Affordable Care Act, the idea was that these drugs would be available to people in ACA. That doesn’t seem to be the case,” she said.

Pelosi was speaking at a hearing arranged by Doggett’s task force, an initial achievement since a handful of members started meeting quietly this fall. The new entity now includes about 10 members, all Democrats.

Their group is filling a vacuum in the Republican-run House, where leaders have declined to conduct hearings or use subpoena power to investigate the pricing trend.

The Senate is a different story. In a bipartisan investigation, the Senate Finance Committee released emails last week showing that executives of California-based Gilead Sciences were keenly aware of potential public outrage when they set the $84,000 cost for a 12-week treatment of Sovaldi, a potent new drug for hepatitis C.

Likewise, the Senate’s bipartisan Special Committee on Aging is investigating the decision by Turing Pharmaceuticals, formed recently by hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, to raise the price of the anti-infection drug Daraprim by 5,000 percent — from $13.50 a pill to $750.

The committee, which is holding its first hearing this week, is looking into price spikes for several other prescriptions, among them a tuberculosis drug that shot up 2,000 percent to nearly $11,000 a bottle and a pill to prevent kidney stones that went from $1.50 to $30.

Big fixes, such as allowing re-importation of cheaper drugs from approved pharmacies in Canada, have proved elusive over the years. The White House has been criticized for not making imports a bargaining chip when engineering the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

With prospects for legislation remote in the near-paralyzed House, Doggett is turning his attention to pressuring the Obama administration.

He said that he and other Democrats intend to focus on the National Institutes of Health, a principal funder of research into new medicines.

“If a drug is developed out of NIH research, I think taxpayers have a stake in what kind of prices are being charged for it,” he said.

Doggett said he also will be looking at Affordable Care Act programs for potential relief while pressing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of Health and Human Services, for more transparency related to negotiated drug prices.

“We need to use every part of the federal government we can to address this crisis,” he said.

Dr. Jeremy Greene of Johns Hopkins University, a physician and drug historian, said efforts like Doggett’s can bring attention to the problem.

“But in order for Congress to make effective progress, it requires bipartisan action,” Greene said in an interview. “The complexities of the off-patent drug marketplace that distort this market cannot be understood without the ability to shine a bright light on pricing and distribution practices. And that really requires subpoena power.”

He added: “The frequency and the severity of shortages and prices of off-patent drugs have been increasing dramatically over the last few years. If nothing changes, why wouldn’t we see more and more companies deploying these tactics?”

Meanwhile, prescription costs are a growing burden, especially for people with serious illnesses.

Heather Block, who is dealing with stage 4 breast cancer, returned to the East Coast recently from Austin, where she underwent lengthy treatment.

For injections of Faslodex, used to combat metastatic breast cancer, she was billed between $5,000 and $6,000 a month. Elsewhere, she’s seen costs as high as $9,800 for the same dosage of the same drug.

“Hopefully I’ll live awhile,” she said in an interview. “I’m never going to beat it. But the longer I live, the more expensive it is. That’s the Catch-22, and it’s a scary Catch-22.”

bill.lambrecht@hearstdc.com