January 25, 2023
Make no mistake, Congress and the Biden administration took a sledgehammer to the American healthcare system in 2022. Our reliably robust and world-leading medical technology that brings new treatments and cures to the market will soon be slowed to a trickle, and Americans will realize the extent to which Democrat-controlled Washington sabotaged medical and scientific progress through the one-two punch of tearing down intellectual property (IP) rights and enacting government price controls on medicine. With the proponents of these catastrophic policies still largely controlling the national agenda, the fight to reverse this onslaught against medical innovation is absolutely paramount.
The price controls Congress created in August through the falsely advertised Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) effectively torpedoed the incentives for investment into research and development (R&D) for future lifesaving cures. Biden targeted drug makers for expansive government overreach and control. The IRA enables the government to “negotiate” drug prices, however, penalties for noncompliance with such “negotiations” are so steep that drug manufacturers are compelled to comply.
It is no surprise these policies were sparked by the Democrats’ long-held desire to move us closer to socialized medicine. Price controls allow government to dictate the profits that private companies can receive from their discoveries, an absolutely horrendous idea. The upfront cost of producing a new medication and getting it to the consumer market averages upwards of $3 billion over 15 years. The radical policies of 2022 will of course destroy the incentives for making these critical initial investments. Evidence for this already exists with multiple manufacturers canceling new projects since the IRA’s passage. These are potential life-changing treatments or lifesaving cures that will never make it to patients, and there will be countless more.
An outright attack on IP protections also made 2022 an ominous year for innovation. The Biden administration paved the way for the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) approval of the TRIPS Waiver, which strips patent rights on COVID-19 vaccines. Given that a sizable amount of new research is built on previous research, eliminating an inventor’s IP protections will make them think twice before undertaking costly R&D. Nothing will stop innovation dead in the water more than government granting itself the right to commandeer an invention for its own purposes. There is also a continued push to expand the TRIPS Waiver to include COVID-19 therapeutics and diagnostics. The decision on expansion has been delayed into the new year and so remains a looming threat to innovators in the medical field.
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