The smart way

Let free market lower drug costs

As a Benton County conservative, I want to thank Sen. John Boozman. He’s an ally of our state’s veterans, farmers, and ranchers. He works hard to rein in Washington’s spending. His conservative track record has always made us proud.

Now is not the time, however, to waver from those conservative principles.

Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden and Iowa’s Chuck Grassley have co-written a bill to lower drug prices that embraces price controls and levies a host of new taxes on the research sector. While such an effort might score easy political points—no one is a fan of how expensive it has become to visit the pharmacy—the proposed legislation will do more to stifle innovation than to actually reduce consumer spending.

The Wyden-Grassley bill is the wrong solution to an important problem.

Arkansas stands behind the effort to lower how much patients spend on drugs. More than one in four Arkansas residents stopped taking medicine as prescribed in 2017 because of the cost. Arkansas is desperate for meaningful solutions to bring down the price of essential drugs. With more than 600,000 Arkansas seniors enrolled in Medicare, changes to Medicare Part D, the program’s prescription drug benefit, are particularly important.

Unfortunately, the Wyden and Grassley answer to this problem is to raise taxes on the research companies that drive innovation. Hefty tax hikes will push investors way from funding scientific search. That doesn’t serve the people of Arkansas.

Without the massive investments in research and development that biopharmaceutical companies make—an average of more than $2 billion for each successful new drug brought to market—we won’t develop the medicine of the future.

That means fewer new cancer drugs for the 300,000 Arkansas residents with cancer, fewer new treatments for the 300,000 Arkansas residents with diabetes or pre-diabetes, and fewer medical advances for the 130,000 Arkansas residents with heart disease. On top of that, new taxes mean fewer new pharmaceutical industry jobs. With 3,000 jobs in Arkansas supported by drug research—and almost 5 million pharmaceutical sector jobs nationwide—we should be looking to boost pharmaceutical investment in the state, not cut it.

On top of that, under the Grassley bill the pharmaceutical industry may just pass those billions in taxes on to consumers in new fees and increases in patient premiums. Patients may, in fact, see their costs go up, not down, under the Grassley bill.

Fortunately there is another option to lower consumer drug prices and leave Arkansas patients with more money in their pockets. Idaho Republican Mike Crapo has written a bill, endorsed by the United States Chamber of Commerce, which will lower patient spending and still encourage essential innovation to find new treatments and cures.

Senator Crapo’s Lower Costs, More Cures Act would lower prices, providing a cap on out-of-pocket costs but, unlike the Wyden and Grassley bill, it would not resort to socialist price controls. It is not surprising, then, that the Crapo bill is co-sponsored by six other prominent Republican senators.

Senator Crapo’s bill would also bring much-needed transparency to the drug supply chain by requiring the middlemen that sit between drug makers and pharmacies to report the discounts and rebates they receive. This is an essential move to help ensure that middlemen share the discounts they receive with consumers. Arkansas has been a leader in improving health-care price transparency. Hopefully, Senator Boozman can help make transparency a health-care priority on a national level.

The Lower Costs, More Cures Act is the right bill for Arkansas.

Senator Boozman, we urge you to support it. Once it becomes law, patients across Arkansas would pay less for medicines. Seniors in Arkansas could see their out-of-pocket costs cut in half. And drug companies could stick to what they do best—keeping America the world’s leading biopharmaceutical innovator.