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Analysis: Americans Don’t Support Surrendering Innovation for Democrats’ Drug Price Controls

Democrats are selling their socialist drug pricing scheme as a way to lower prices, but Americans oppose it once they learn that this kills cures and life-improving treatments.

What they aren’t telling you is this: Their drug price control scheme will kill innovation, mean fewer new treatments and cures, and a loss of jobs in the biopharma industry.

Once Americans learn about these consequences they reject it outright. Furthermore, this isn’t a “negotiation” – Democrats’ proposal has Washington dictate prices under threat of exorbitantly higher taxes on medical innovators.

Key Takeaways:

The vast majority of Americans oppose government negotiation if it results in fewer new medicines being developed in the future. 

  • A 50-state Morning Consult/PhRMA poll shows two thirds of Americans oppose price controls if they put the government in charge and take away power from doctors to prescribe medicines that best meet the needs of patients.
  • The Kaiser Family Foundation also finds that Democrats’ price control scheme drops in popularity the moment respondents see that it oculd lead to less research and development of new drugs or limit access to newer prescription drugs.

  • A March 2022 Ipsos/PhRMA poll reveals only 14 percent of Americans support Washington price controls if they limit their access to newer prescription medicines. Even if it “only” delays access, only 15 percent support the proposal then.
  • The same poll shows that seniors are even more skeptical – 10 percent support the price controls when they learn of how it delays people’s access to new medicines.

Numerous studies show the proposal would kill new treatments, including a University of Chicago study that shows the number going up to 342.

  • Democrats’ price-fixing scheme would kill up to 342 cures, according to a study by the University of Chicago, yet they claim it’s merely a “negotiating” approach that would lower the price of drugs.
  • A new study from Vital Transformation finds that if drug price controls under consideration in the Senate had been enacted during the last decade, only six of 110 currently approved therapies would have made it to patients.
  • Loss of innovation = a death sentence for patients. Looking at CMS drug utilization data from 2016 to 2020 of the types of drugs expected to be most impacted by Democrats’ price fixing, even the most conservative estimates of innovation lost from these policies could have left over 42 million patients without the medicine they needed.
  • Surrendering in the fight against cancer: The Council of State Bio Associations writes that socialist drug price controls will get in the way of the fight against cancer: “In oncology alone, the University of Chicago found that price controls would reduce overall annual cancer R&D spending by about $18.1 billion, or 31.8 percent.”
    • They continue: “The specter of government price setting threatens to undermine a sector that has created over 1.8 million jobs across all 50 states and that represents a large portion of our nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – generating an economic output of approximately $2.6 trillion annually.”
  • Limiting patients’ access to low-cost medicines: Back in March, medical innovators wrote to Congress that “The untested approach in the House-passed Build Back Better Act (H.R. 5376) does not address these challenges and could in fact harm future savings from generic and biosimilar medicines. The Build Back Better Act’s approach to direct negotiations in Medicare and inflation-based penalties, as passed by the House, would alter the incentive for generic and biosimilar manufacturers to develop new medicines […] and is misguided and would limit patients’ access to low-cost medicines.”

The Bipartisan Solution that Works: The Lower Costs, More Cures Act (H.R. 19) lowers costs for all prescription drugs.

  • Every provision in H.R. 19 is bipartisan. It will lower health care costs and ensure America leads in health care innovation for more cures and treatments.
  • It gives patients more drug price transparency and ensures public disclosure of drug costs and discounts.
  • It increases low-cost options by bringing more generic and biosimilar competition to the marketplace fast.
  • It caps seniors’ out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $50 per month.
  • It allows high deductible health insurance plans to cover insulin before the deductible kicks in.

READ: Brady: We Can Lower Costs for Patients Without Sacrificing Cures

READ: Wenstrup: Dems’ Price Controls Result in Fewer Drugs