Last year, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law. He has since touted the ‘benefits’ of his legislation when it comes to lowering drug costs. But the president and his administration have seemingly ignored the major concerns raised by countless patients, economists, and members of the medical research community. These stakeholders rightfully predicted that the IRA would harm our ability to discover new cures for hard-to-treat diseases like cancer, and it’s proving true.
Ironically, the Biden administration announced the reignition of its Cancer Moonshot initiative about six months after the IRA’s passage. In its ambitious goal of preventing more than four million cancer deaths by 2047 and one day “end[ing] cancer as we know it,” the White House claims one of its key priorities is to “drive new innovation and deliver the latest progress to patients and communities.”
With the IRA in place, this aspiration has never been further from reach.
This law grants the federal government unchecked and unprecedented authority to set certain drugs’ pricing however it sees fit. It does not matter how much time or money went into the development of a drug, or how much value the drug provides to patients. Under the IRA, the Biden administration has sent a clear message to medical researchers: Your costly – potentially lifesaving – investments will no longer pay off.
The Biden administration is also scrapping important intellectual property protections that have always set the United States apart and enabled its long history of innovation. American companies lead the charge when it comes to developing new medicines and advancing scientific research. This is no accident. We have the most innovative economy in the world because our founders designed a strong patent system that incentivizes new discoveries. But for medical researchers, this incentive has vanished thanks to the IRA.
Why would a company risk pursuing new science when the government has proven that it has the power to eliminate free market competition and steal patent protections? The simple answer—companies won’t take the risk.
I’m not speaking in hypotheticals, either. Major biopharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly and Roche have already announced the cancellation of drug development projects and clinical trials.
A group of nearly 30 biopharmaceutical leaders recently submitted a letter to the White House detailing concerns with the new policies and their impact on innovation. Big Pharma may get a bad rap, but we can’t forget that these are the companies who have brought groundbreaking medicines into existence, especially for those suffering from hard-to-treat cancers or rare diseases.
Tremendous medical advancements have been made in recent years. According to the American Cancer Society, the overall cancer mortality rate has declined 33 percent since its peak in 1991. This includes a 1.5 percent decrease between 2019 and 2020 alone. This kind of progress simply would not be possible without innovation in the U.S. biopharmaceutical industry.
Yes, we need to find solutions to lower drug costs for patients. No, we should not buy into political talking points that ignore the realities of the U.S. drug market. American patients have faster and greater access to new medicines—more so than patients anywhere else in the world.
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, the Biden administration has taken a system that was delivering groundbreaking cures for patients and turned it on its head.
The IRA is more than just bad policy—it’s life threatening. The president is trying to rack up political wins ahead of the election, but he is doing so at the expense of life saving drugs and the potential to make his Cancer Moonshot a reality.
