Democrats’ Prescription Drug Socialism Would Cut Life-Saving Treatments and Cures
‘Democrats’ policy would not bring about some paradise where we get all the amazing new innovations we would have gotten anyway, but at lower prices. Their policy would bring about a world where many fewer new drugs and treatments get invented in the first place, as companies cut back on R&D… We’re talking about a tidal wave of Washington meddling, wiping out future treatments and cures for Americans suffering with rare diseases. What a terrible and tragic part of their reckless plans.’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding drug pricing:
“I want to drill down on Democrats’ plan to take a buzzsaw to the research and development behind new life-saving medical treatments and cures.
“The American people have enough common sense to know that government can’t actually make something cost less by making it illegal to raise its price.
“This is the logic of college-sophomore socialism. It’s not fair that a certain thing costs more than we’d like, so why doesn’t the government simply pass a law making it cheaper?
“Well, Madam President, the world would be a lot easier for everybody if things actually worked that way. It would certainly be easier to be a member of Congress! We could just vote to set the price of everything in America, snap our fingers, and everybody in the country could enjoy $5 smartphones, $10 TVs, and $100 pickup trucks.
“What a concept!
“Why hasn’t anybody thought of this genius idea before?
“Well, of course, people have. Plenty of governments have tried crude price-fixing. Cuba. Venezuela. The old Soviet Union.
“Not exactly thriving paradises. Not pinnacles of prosperity, wellbeing, or innovation. Not the examples we want to follow.
“Everybody wants prescription drugs and complex medicines to be more affordable. Everybody wants to help struggling families. That’s a goal that we all share.
“But you know what will not achieve that goal? Empowering some Biden Administration bureaucrat to sit down at a desk and arbitrarily name the price that manufacturers can charge.
“Democrats’ policy would not bring about some paradise where we get all the amazing new innovations we would have gotten anyway, but at lower prices. Their policy would bring about a world where many fewer new drugs and treatments get invented in the first place, as companies cut back on R&D.
“By one analysis, if Democrats’ price-fixing scheme had already been in place, 104 of 110 major new medicines released in the past decade may never have made it to market.
“We would literally have fewer life-saving cures and treatments. More Americans would die, and die younger, under Democrats’ policy.
“And the new drugs that did still get invented would be more expensive when they hit the market. That’s according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
“Madam President, during the Obama Administration, I worked with then-Vice President Biden on a project he was especially passionate about. I was proud to help launch his cancer moonshot within the 21st Century Cures Act.
“But according to one expert’s calculations, the bill President Biden wants Senate Democrats to ram through this weekend would reduce cancer research spending by more than nine times as much as our Cancer Moonshot expanded it.
“Let me say that again. According to one expert, this far-left takeover of Americans’ medicine cabinets would destroy nine times as much cancer funding as we provided with the Cancer Moonshot.
“We’re talking about a tidal wave of Washington meddling, wiping out future treatments and cures for Americans suffering with rare diseases. What a terrible and tragic part of their reckless plans.”
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