Could drug price regulation produce good and not harm?

A sampling of criticism of drug price controls.

Trump’s Drug Price Control Orders Are Bound to Backfire

At a White House gathering last Friday, President Trump announced four new executive orders intended to restrict the ways pharmaceutical companies set the price of prescription drugs. He signed and issued three that day and promised to issue a fourth if drug industry representatives don’t agree to massive price controls at a meeting tomorrow.

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that just eight days earlier he staged a highly publicized press conference to explain how regulation often does more harm than good and portray himself as a slasher of federal red tape, Trump boasted Friday about adding to that burden. But, just as the president often warns, those new rules are likely to backfire. They may produce modestly lower prices for some patients in the short term, but everyone will bear the burden of higher prices and fewer treatment options in the long run.

Continue reading at Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Trump’s Drug Price Panic

He adopts Biden-like controls that would harm U.S. innovation.

President Trump’s decline in the polls is getting more expensive by the day. The next virus spending bill will cost trillions, and late Friday the President made a pitch for seniors with haphazard executive orders to lower drug prices. His prescription is akin to what Democrats are offering: more government control.

“I’m unrigging the system that is many decades old. We’re doing something that should have been done a long time ago,” the President said at a press conference. “Previous administrations did nothing—absolutely nothing—as drug lobbyists, special interests, and foreign countries freely ripped off our citizens.” Did Bernie Sanders ghost write his remarks? …

Mr. Trump’s drug-pricing orders are a me-too Democratic plan.

Continue reading at Wall Street Journal.

Here’s How Trump Should Address the High Cost of Prescription Drugs

… If President Trump wants to bring down drug prices, he should avoid new layers of regulations and controls that will only make matters worse, and focus on bringing consumer-driven market forces and competition to this broken system. … Here’s a solution: stop focusing on trying to control drug prices, and start paying attention to who’s paying them. Tax and regulatory policy, such as the exemption for employer?provided insurance or mandated?benefits laws, have led to a third party—often the government—paying the vast majority of medical bills. With the consumer out of the loop, costs to the third party — and consequently premiums — continue to rise.

Continue reading at Cato Institute.

Sally Pipes: Trump’s drug pricing executive orders harmful to patients — will hinder development of new drugs

The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated we need more medical innovation

The International Pricing Index is the worst offender in the three executive orders. The index links the prices the U.S. government pays for prescription drugs to the lower prices Britain, France, Canada and other developed nations pay for the same drugs.

Governments in these countries forcibly cap drug prices. By tying U.S. drug prices to those overseas, President Trump is effectively importing other countries’ price controls. Those price controls will deprive pharmaceutical researchers of the revenue needed to fund cutting-edge development of new drugs that could improve and in some cases save the lives of millions of patients. …

For drug companies and their backers to continue funding research and development, they need some level of assurance that their high-risk investments could pay off.

President Trump’s executive orders render such assurance impossible. Price controls could reduce drug companies’ revenue by as much as $1 trillion over a decade. As a result, up to 15 fewer new drugs could make it to market over that period, according to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.

Continue reading at Fox News.

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash