NOTICIAS

Biden’s Cancer Cure Reduction Act
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)
August 15, 2022
Newsweek

…[B]y empowering government bureaucrats to set artificial price caps on drugs, the Inflation Reduction Act will remove the incentive to produce innovative therapeutics for patients in dire need. Even as the legislation lowers routine costs for some, the University of Chicago estimates it will slash national biomedical R&D by $663 billion—almost 20 percent—over the next 17 years.
 
The impact will be felt heavily by Americans suffering from rare and difficult-to-treat diseases like cancer…. [T]he Democrats’ price controls will cut cancer research by an annual $18 billion. That will undermine…the legislation Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) and I pushed through Congress in 2017 to expand kids’ access to innovative cancer drugs, as well as the follow-up bill we introduced this year.
 
It is little comfort that drug price controls won’t take effect until nine or 13 years after initial approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Nearly 60 percent of cancer treatments undergo further R&D later on down the line to receive additional indications….
 
Other areas of research will be affected, too. Just think about the lives and resources saved by mRNA vaccines during the pandemic. Those vaccines required lots of time and money to develop—what similarly significant medicines will we miss out on in the future due to decreased R&D?
 
We’ve seen this happen before. European countries were the world’s leading medical innovators until price controls set them on a path to mediocrity. If we follow in Europe’s footsteps, we will give China…yet another edge in the contest for global leadership….
 
There are things we can and should do to reduce drug prices, but dictating those prices from on high is not one of them. Much of what Americans gain through the Inflation Reduction Act will be paid for in lives lost to diseases like cancer, and in geopolitical strength….

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