{"id":26549,"date":"2025-11-19T07:40:47","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T12:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=26549"},"modified":"2025-11-19T08:48:51","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T13:48:51","slug":"as-senate-finance-committee-convenes-on-healthcare-costs-first-do-no-harm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/26549\/as-senate-finance-committee-convenes-on-healthcare-costs-first-do-no-harm\/","title":{"rendered":"As Senate Finance Committee Convenes on Healthcare Costs, First Do No Harm"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the United States Senate Finance Committee convenes today for a meeting<\/a> entitled “The Rising Cost of Health Care:\u00a0 Considering Meaningful Solutions for All Americans,” the enduring adage of medical care applies:\u00a0 Do no harm.<\/p>\n

Specifically, as we’ve detailed at CFIF, we must especially avoid potentially catastrophic ideas like drug price controls (whether through so-called “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) programs or any other) and violations of patent and intellectual property (IP) protections<\/a> in which the United States leads the world.\u00a0 Indeed, our more free-market approach explains why America leads the world<\/a> in lifesaving healthcare innovation, accounting for an astonishing two-thirds of all new drugs introduced to the world each year:<\/p>\n

\n

The reasons that MFN schemes would only exacerbate existing problems are several.<\/p>\n

First, drug price controls depress innovation in foreign nations such as those in the European Union (EU) that practice them.\u00a0 That\u2019s because drug innovation requires massive investments in research and development (R&D), often exceeding $2.6 billion to bring each new potential drug to the consumer market.\u00a0 Consequently, when foreign governments impose artificially low prices, they necessarily strip pharmaceutical innovators of the revenue required to fund new treatments.\u00a0 As a result, fewer breakthrough therapies arrive, and the slowdown in medical advances can cost lives.<\/p>\n

As noted above, that consequence isn\u2019t hypothetical or open to debate.\u00a0 To wit, the more market-oriented U.S. accounts for an astounding two-thirds<\/em> of all new drugs<\/a><\/strong> introduced to the world, far above our share of the world\u2019s population or economic production.\u00a0 That\u2019s no accident or coincidence.<\/p>\n

Second, and partly as a consequence of the dynamic described immediately above, drug price controls reduce access to lifesaving drugs.\u00a0 Nations that impose them suffer from delayed drug availability and restricted access, whereas the newest and most effective pharmaceutical innovations typically reach the U.S. market first.<\/p>\n

To illustrate, of 270 medicines introduced<\/a><\/strong> in the U.S. from 2011 through 2018, only 53% became available in France, 64% in Britain and 67% of them in Germany.\u00a0 Only 52% of that 270 became available to Canadians, 41% to Australians and 48% to the Japanese.<\/p>\n

If the U.S. were to adopt MFN pricing, it would foolishly import those foreign delays and access restrictions, in turn reducing American consumers\u2019 access to cutting-edge treatments.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Along the way, the Committee should also highlight the perils of continued subsidies for ObamaCare and the potential benefits of other patient-centered reforms like health savings accounts (HSAs) and Section 340B reform<\/a>.\u00a0 Healthcare costs remain an important concern for Americans, and we must promote federal policies that improve matters for consumers and patients, not harm them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the United States Senate Finance Committee convenes today for a meeting entitled “The Rising Cost of Health Care:\u00a0 Considering Meaningful Solutions for All Americans,” the enduring adage of medical care applies:\u00a0 Do no harm. Specifically, as we’ve detailed at CFIF, we must especially avoid potentially catastrophic ideas like drug price controls (whether through so-called […]<\/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":[1251,861,500,2871,2872,5057,4805],"class_list":["post-26549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-drugs","tag-healthcare","tag-inflation","tag-intellectual-property","tag-ip","tag-patents","tag-pharmaceuticals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26549","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=26549"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26552,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26549\/revisions\/26552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}