{"id":25418,"date":"2019-10-01T16:32:46","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T20:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=25418"},"modified":"2019-10-01T16:39:12","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T20:39:12","slug":"healthcare-legislation-mustnt-jeopardize-innovation-by-weakening-patent-protections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/25418\/healthcare-legislation-mustnt-jeopardize-innovation-by-weakening-patent-protections\/","title":{"rendered":"Cicilline Bill Would Jeopardize Pharmaceutical Innovation by Weakening Patent Protections"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the ongoing debate over healthcare reform, it’s important to keep our collective eye on the ball.\u00a0 In that vein, as CFIF has repeatedly emphasized<\/a>, we must ensure that free market principles prevail, and that includes protecting patent rights rather than weakening them.\u00a0 Otherwise, American consumers will pay the price in fewer pharmaceutical innovations, shortages and worse health outcomes.<\/p>\n

After all, as we’ve often pointed out, it’s not by accident that the United States accounts for an astonishing two-thirds of all new pharmaceuticals in the world.\u00a0 That reflects the fact that we lead the world in intellectual property (IP) protections and avoid the destructive price controls that nations favoring socialized medicine impose.\u00a0 As a consequence, patients in those countries don’t receive the new lifesaving and life-enhancing drugs that we do.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there’s bad news to report in that regard, as Representative David Cicilline (D – Rhode Island) has introduced<\/a> the misnamed “Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Through Promoting Competition Act.”\u00a0 Most conspicuously, his proposal would begin prohibiting patent protections for pharmaceutical innovators developing improvements to their existing products.<\/p>\n

Here’s why this is important.\u00a0 Existing laws that have made us the most innovative nation in history allow for patent protection for new and useful improvements to existing pharmaceuticals.\u00a0 Such improvements can help patients in such ways as eliminating side effects, reducing the necessary frequency or dosage, enhancing potency, boosting effectiveness or even addressing other illnesses beyond the drug’s original purpose.<\/p>\n

But if innovators can no longer expect patent protections for the billions of dollars and years of hard work invested in developing them, then those innovations will begin to dry up.\u00a0 Developing new or improved drugs typically requires over 10 years, and only approximately 10% of new discoveries actually make it to market after regulatory approval.\u00a0 Accordingly, we must enhance<\/em> the prospect that the fruits of innovators’ labors will be obtainable, not diminish<\/em> them.<\/p>\n

Representative Cicilline’s proposed bill is therefore a potentially catastrophic one for American consumers, who rely upon pharmaceutical innovators more and more to save lives and maintain health.\u00a0 We therefore call upon all Members of Congress to oppose it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the ongoing debate over healthcare reform, it’s important to keep our collective eye on the ball.\u00a0 In that vein, as CFIF has repeatedly emphasized, we must ensure that free market principles prevail, and that includes protecting patent rights rather than weakening them.\u00a0 Otherwise, American consumers will pay the price in fewer pharmaceutical innovations, shortages […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1251,861,2872,4272,5057,4805],"class_list":["post-25418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-drugs","tag-healthcare","tag-ip","tag-medicine","tag-patents","tag-pharmaceuticals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25418"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25426,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25418\/revisions\/25426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}