Today, National Taxpayers Union President Pete Sepp released the following statement in response to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s introduction of H.R. 3.
“Speaker Pelosi’s plan combines all the worst elements of government-first approaches to prescription drugs, including foreign price controls, inflation caps, and federally-mandated price negotiations. However, the Speaker’s plan goes further than even single-payer proposals like Medicare for All. The Speaker would institute a retroactive tax on manufacturers that don’t reach an agreement with the government, and would mandate that publicly-negotiated prices apply to the private sector as well. These are not 'voluntary' negotiations, as the proposal suggests, but government extortion and price-setting.”
“Price controls would lead to supply shortages and prevent innovative, life-saving treatments from coming to market. This would harm the most vulnerable patients in our country and, in the long run, raise the costs of other care, like hospitalization, for taxpayer-funded health programs. Relief from prescription drug prices should target the slice of patients struggling with high costs, rather than making aggressive changes to a system that provides access and affordability for tens of millions of Americans. As we have noted before, no other industrialized country in the world can boast of such a successful policy environment that both encourages discoveries to reach patients (nearly 90 percent of newly launched drugs worldwide are available here) and controls costs (90 percent of prescriptions written in the U.S. are for generics).
“We urge lawmakers to reject Speaker Pelosi’s plan, and work instead to lower regulatory barriers, advocate for trade policies that defend American innovation in drugs, and reform federal program rules that inhibit generics and biosimilars. Market-oriented reforms, not vast new government powers, will offer the best results for patients and taxpayers.”
For last week's open letter from NTU to lawmakers urging opposition to Speaker Pelosi's prescription drug plan, please click here.