Stop the Expansion of Drug Price Control Policies

Today, President Joe Biden and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders teamed up to deliver remarks from the White House regarding their plan supposedly to lower healthcare costs for Americans. Here is the catch: Their plan to lower healthcare costs requires increasing drug price controls across the country, something that would result in dire consequences on patient access, medical innovation, and market competition. The costs could hardly be higher in terms of Americans’ lives and health.

Biden and Sanders addressed the Inflation Reduction Act's cap on Medicare prescription drugs and the IRA’s cap on insulin. Most alarmingly, Biden and Sanders urged Congress to increase the number of Medicare drugs subject to price controls under the IRA from 10 to 50. 

TAPP has highlighted the negative effects of price controls many times. There is no need for expanded price control policies.

More price controls mean less innovation as well as less research and development. In fact, studies project that price control policies will reduce research and development efforts by 12 percent by 2039, leading to 135 fewer drug approvals. 

Even Generic drugs, which are proven to lower prices by as much as 51 percent, are undermined by price controls and forced to operate under a single “maximum fair price” on the market. That price does not account for how much a certain drug costs to develop and manufacture, forcing drug developers to decline investing in generic alternatives. Thus, price controls take essential treatments out of the hands of patients.

In addition, price controls lead to drug shortages and limit patient access. In recent years, shortages of treatments including cancer drugs, asthma medication, hormones, and children’s pain medication have become all too common. Americans have grown accustomed to the fastest treatment available while patients in other countries literally die waiting for treatment. Maintaining access to treatment and cures is paramount.

This is why TAPP urges Congress to reject calls to impose more price controls on prescription drugs.