August 18, 2022

Gerard Scimeca
Chairman, CASE

As President Biden and Democrats celebrate their reconciliation “victory,” American patients are bracing for the worst. After months of backroom deal-making, Biden signed the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA). With the President’s signature, the dangerous provisions included in this massive spending package will weaken Americans’ healthcare and access to prescription medications through government-set price controls and punitive taxes on drug makers. Hopefully, the public will not be fooled. Despite their grandstanding, the Democrats’ expansion of government control over healthcare won’t lower drug prices, nor will it satisfy their impulse to enact even more damaging legislation down the road in their ongoing crusade to flip our healthcare system on its head. 

For decades Americans have witnessed Democrats’ obsession with pushing our nation toward socialized medicine and its dystopian vision of Washington as our primary caregiver; an obsession that habitually ignores its actual impact on patients. Consider Obamacare. Despite countless promises of reduced costs for Americans, premiums have continued to rise, just as opponents of Obamacare predicted. Even this year a Kaiser Family Foundation projection points to a median rate hike of 10% next year. Democrats’ response to their objective failure? Adjust, recalibrate, revise? Of course not, the response to failure is to always claim the government didn’t go far enough, as Democrats are currently doing by shoring up the top-heavy Obamacare plans with billions more in subsidies for insurers. The IRA will prove no different. As the negative impacts of this legislation begin to take hold, we can fully expect the left to double down by demanding even greater government control over costs and access.

Liberals aren’t even trying to hide their intentions. Look no further than Senator Bernie Sanders’ comments on the reconciliation package. He made it clear that the legislation didn’t pass his purity test when it comes to destroying the foundations of American healthcare. For example, he railed against the drug pricing provisions, claiming that not enough drugs were subject to government “negotiation” (a phony word meaning price controls). Instead, he called for aggressive measures like tying the price of drugs for Medicare to those paid by the Veterans Administration. They’ve tried this before with the original “Build Back Better” bill and H.R. 3, which targeted significantly more drugs for government controlled “price-negotiation.” H.R. 3 would have subjected at least 50 drugs to government overreach. As an example of the future harm U.S. patients can expect, a recent study estimated that if these same Democrat price controls had been instituted 10 years ago, 104 of the 110 new cancer therapies developed in that time would have been at risk for cancellation.

It’s clear that Democrats are utterly indifferent to the devastating impact their socialist vision will have on patients. Even with the left’s ongoing interference into our healthcare industry, Americans still enjoy the benefits of arguably the most efficient, and innovative healthcare system. For example, the Galen Institute reports that patients in the U.S. had access to 90% of the new drugs produced globally between 2011 and 2018 – 30% more than did patients in the U.K. and more than double that of Canada, nations that – no surprise – have locked down their system with socialist price controls. Diminished access to current and future medicine is far from the only harm owed to this legislation, as Washington’s punitive price-caps and additional taxes on drug makers will lead to an exodus of investment in U.S. pharmaceuticals. As a result, Americans will experience the same limited access to new, lifesaving medications that we have seen in other countries embracing price controls. This ongoing cycle will be a death spiral for the U.S. drug market and will ultimately and predictably diminish the quality and availability to critical medications, all while producing no palpable patient benefits.

Democrats have no intention of stopping their ideological march toward a full-blown socialist healthcare system. The radical agenda liberals are pursuing is decades in the making. Even as the consequences of these policies mount, proponents will dig in and double down, calling for further government action. Failure begets failure. In the wake of President Biden’s signature on this irresponsible package, advocates of an open and innovative healthcare system must be prepared for the battles to come. This is only the beginning.