Deroy Murdock: Democrats plot War on New Drugs with $3.5T spending bill
If H.R. 3 slices drug companies' incomes, they will have less money to create new and better drugs
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Total Democratic Party control of Washington has yielded, for starters: An Afghan meltdown, bedlam on the "border," a bloody crime surge, energy woes, mounting inflation, and racial tension.
Next stop: Your medicine chest.
Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Bernie Sanders' $3.5 trillion spending orgy includes a poison pill -- almost literally.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Congressional Budget Office estimates that H.R. 3 (AKA the Lower Drug Costs Now Act) would help "pay for" this fiscal incontinence by squeezing $581.6 billion from the pharmaceutical industry over the next 10 years.
More than just a simple tax on "evil, drug companies," this measure would blackmail this sector, chop into its bottom line, and torpedo research and development into future therapies. Down the road, this means more ailments and earlier deaths for everyday Americans. In other words, just another day at the office for Democrats.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}H.R. 3 would force pharmaceutical manufacturers to haggle over prices with federal functionaries. But this is not the bargaining between buyers and sellers that occurs daily across America. H.R. 3 defines "negotiation" as Washington bureaucrats dictating an amount that they feel like paying for a drug, based on overseas price controls mandated via socialized medicine. Those fixed prices would regulate all sales – to Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers.
And what if a drug company resists this new policy? That's when federal extortion kicks in.
Pharmaceutical firms that will not swallow Uncle Sam's prices would face taxes on gross revenues (not net profits) that start at 65 percent. But that tribute rises every 90 days that any such enterprise refuses to be bludgeoned. Ultimately, as Biden said at the White House on August 12: "It means drug companies would have to sell their drugs to all distributors at the Medicare price or face up to a 95 percent excise tax."
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Applied to dating, this is akin to: "Let's spend the night together. If not, you're free to go home naked -- but you can keep your shoes on." H.R. 3 must have been written by Democrat mega donor Harvey Weinstein.
This Left-wing scheme would rip huge chunks out of drug companies' hides. CBO forecasts that "Negotiations would reduce prices by 57 percent to 75 percent, relative to current prices." Of course, even a 75 percent sales drop beats a 95 percent cut. This helps explain the Leninist levels of this proposed new tax.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks projects that this legislation could empty his trade's cash registers by 40 percent.
Health care consultancy Avalare predicts that, across this industry, H.R. 3's price controls could affect up to 550 drugs and slash drugmakers' aggregate revenues by $1.65 trillion within five years.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}So, what? If pharmaceutical CEOs must postpone their new yacht purchases or buy slightly smaller ski chalets, they will survive.
If only the world were so cartoonishly simple.
Punching the drug industry in the mouth gives regular patients bloody lips. If H.R. 3 slices drug companies' incomes, they will have less money to create new and better drugs.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The proposals that we're seeing from Congress will devastate this industry," said Merck chairman Kenneth Frazier. "The most difficult disease states, the most risky, the most expensive projects will be at risk," Frazier added. "The hundreds and thousands of small biotechs that rely on venture capital investments from big pharmaceutical companies will just disappear."
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Frazier said of his company: "We have modeled it, and our ability to fund R&D inside Merck will be reduced by almost half."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This means emptier medicine chests.
According to CBO, "the reduction in the number of new drugs entering" the market within 30 years "ranges between 21 and 59." Even more ominous, University of Chicago professor Tomas Philipson expects H.R. 3 to abort between 167 and 342 new drugs by 2039.
A vaccine against the common cold? A pill that stops miscarriages? A cure for prostate cancer? Gummies that reverse Alzheimer's? H.R. 3 could entomb such inventions in their test tubes.
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It typically takes $2.6 billion and 10.5 years to release a new drug. Why should Acme Laboratories endure such expense and trouble if some Democrat thug at HHS decrees that the "fair" price is 43 to just 25 cents on each anticipated dollar?
In that case, why bother with healthcare innovations? Instead, sell generics, leave work at 3:00 p.m., and play golf. If passed, this Democrat brainstorm would clear research labs and crowd country clubs.
"If H.R.3 passes -- and Congress redefines the word 'negotiation' no longer to mean real negotiation -- our critical funding from venture capitalists will dry up, along with our potential to develop urgently needed new treatment options," Joanne Kotz, CEO of Jnana Therapeutics, warned Wednesday at a Washington, D.C. meeting of Incubate, a coalition of early-stage pharmaceutical investors. "As a result, we will all lose hope of having better medicines tomorrow than we have today. We'll all face suffering and greater costs from diseases that our research could have averted."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}As if on cue, Peter Kolchinsky underscored Kotz's premonition.
"If the government can pick any arbitrarily low price it wants, and prevent a company from saying 'no' by threatening it with a ruinous 95 percent tax, then I could not justify any biomedical R&D investment to my investors," the successful venture capitalist declared. "In other words, we should expect a near total collapse of R&D funding."
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Among other innovations, pharmaceutical companies have created drugs such as Avastin and Gleevec that -- for many -- have transformed cancer from a death sentence into a temporary headache. Descovy and Truvada are, essentially, AIDS-vaccine pills. And President Donald J. Trump's Operation Warp Speed inspired Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson to deliver COVID-19 inoculations in a record 12 months.
The cure-crushing H.R. 3 is how Democrats say thank you for these miracles and threaten unseen breakthroughs.