Kevin Brady: “I would note that every Democrat in Congress, in the House and Senate, strongly opposed providing prescription drugs for…”

“I would note that every Democrat in Congress, in the House and Senate, strongly opposed providing prescription drugs for seniors in Medicare part D, and then-Leader Pelosi at the time said, it would end Medicare as we know it to help seniors with these lifesaving medicines. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record the following study from the University of Chicago which shows the Democrats' drug pricing scheme and controls could kill up to 342 cures, many of them lifesaving cures, in the next two decades alone. [From University of Chicago, Sept. 2021] The Evidence Base on the Impact of Price Controls on Medical Innovation (By Tomas J. Philipson and Troy Durie) Executive Summary This issue brief reviews the evidence on the impact of price controls on biopharmaceutical innovation and calibrates what this evidence implies for recent price control proposals in the US. A large academic literature estimates the effect of future drug revenues on R&D spending with a mid-range effect of a 1 percent reduction in revenue leading to a 1.5 percent reduction in R&D activity. Using the range of such effects found in the literature we find the proposed price controls of US bill HR3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act, would lead to a 29 to 60 percent reduction in R&D from 2021 to 2039 which translates into 167 to 342 fewer new drug approvals during that period. The mid-range effect of the evidence implies a 44.6 percent decline in R&D and 254 fewer new drug approvals.…”