LETTER: Drug price controls could stifle innovation
After reading a recent letter to the editor about a husband and wife who were struggling to pay for medications, my heart went out to the author. Life-saving care shouldn’t be out of financial reach for American patients.
Still, I don’t believe that Medicare negotiation is the answer that congressional leaders are making it out to be. While it could lower certain prescription medication costs over time, it could also pose a threat to innovation. If we want to find cures to cancer, Alzheimer’s, ALS or multiple sclerosis, we need pharmaceutical companies to be able to do their jobs.
Medicare negotiation could stand in the way of lifesaving research and progress. One estimate from the University of Chicago stated that price-setting policies such as Medicare negotiation could limit the creation of new cures so drastically that it could lead to the unnecessary deaths of more than 14 million Americans. I urge our leaders to keep those 14 million lives in mind when they take a vote on this issue.
