The administration is training its sights on "foreign freeloaders," the developed nations that pay pennies on the dollar for the exact same drugs Americans take.
It's deeply unfair, especially since most of those medicines are invented in the United States.
Unfortunately, the administration's well-intentioned plan to punish foreign freeloaders won't work. It would reward them while depriving millions of Americans of life-saving medicines.
The plan overhauls Medicare Part B, which covers immunotherapies and injectable treatments for cancer, osteoporosis, and more. Medicare currently pays double what other developed nations do for Part B drugs.
That disparity is no coincidence. Those nations' socialist healthcare systems require pharmaceutical companies to heavily discount medicines. If companies refuse, governments don't approve the drugs for sale.
The United Kingdom decides which drugs to cover. It recently denied patients access to a game-changing prostate cancer drug because it wasn't "cost-effective."
France dictates which drugs doctors can prescribe. While 100 percent of cardiovascular therapies invented between 2011 and 2017 were available to Americans, just half were available to French patients.
Canada similarly restricts access to medicines. While Americans have access to 95 percent of all oncology medications launched in the last seven years, Canadians have access to less than two-thirds of those drugs.
The administration wants to make price controls a fixture of Medicare. The government would index Part B prices to the average sales prices in roughly a dozen industrialized countries.
That would have terrible consequences for patients. In the short-term, Americans will have to wait longer for new medicines.
Currently, manufacturers seek regulatory approval in the United States before seeking approval elsewhere. America's comparatively free-market healthcare system offers more opportunities to generate revenue than Europe's socialized health systems. Americans can access new cancer drugs two years faster than patients in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.
Price controls would make America's market less attractive. Manufacturers would have less incentive to sell their medicines in the United States before other countries. Consequently, seniors fighting deadly diseases may go without drugs that could save their lives.
Price controls would also imperil research efforts. It takes $2.5 billion and a decade to bring one drug to market. The majority of medicines never make it out of the lab. Companies only continue to invest under the assumption that they'll recoup their investment.
Today, the United States leads the world in biopharmaceutical investment, contributing $60 billion to R&D annually. We also produce half of all new medicines. The administration's plan would bring this innovation to a halt.
President Trump has promised to fix "the injustice of high drug prices" while ensuring patients have access to "treatments that could potentially save their lives." Price controls aren't the right solution. They'd delay access to critical medications and smother the cures of tomorrow.
Stacy Washington is a decorated Air Force Veteran, an Emmy nominated TV personality, and the host of the nationally syndicated radio program "Stacy on the Right."
