Legislation giving Medicare the ability to negotiate drug prices in the United States would make their life-saving potential immediately available to millions of Americans who cannot now afford them, thus extending lives and alleviating suffering. The pharmaceutical industry, however, has done a masterful job of arguing that these Americans must suffer in the short term since lower prices would gut long-term innovation in drug development.
The U.S. Can Lower Drug Prices Without Sacrificing Innovation
Large pharmaceutical companies are nowhere near as important to real drug innovation as they purport to be.
October 01, 2021
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Summary.
With Congress considering legislation to allow Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices, large pharmaceutical companies are once again waging a campaign that contends that doing so would seriously harm the development of breakthrough drugs. This is not true. Smaller companies now account for the lion’s share of such breakthroughs. The key to supporting drug innovation is to increase NIH funding of the efforts that gives rise to these new companies, cut the costs and accelerate the speed of clinical trials, and reform patent law.