Letter: Pelosi’s drug pricing plan will hurt innovation and access

To the Editor:

For people living with chronic illness, daily life can be excruciatingly difficult. But if your child is the one suffering, like my daughter who has POTS, gastroparesis, and celiac disease, life is often challenging because you feel useless. No parent wants to feel like they cannot help their child.

Fortunately, our medical researchers are finding new treatments every day. Progress is even being made on my daughter’s conditions, and we hope every day for the next life-changing medication.

But I fear that under Speaker Pelosi’s new bill, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act, we may be waiting much longer. The legislation, however well intended, threatens to slow the development of new medicines by undermining the $100 billion invested in research and development each year.

There’s no magic formula she’s discovered in her bill; she is simply imitating ideas that have been tried and failed before, like establishing de facto price controls based on the average price in six foreign countries with government-run health care systems. In some of these countries, there are extreme shortages of medications and others are not on the market at all.

Our researchers are some of the most talented scientists in the world, and I don’t want to lose them or undermine their work, which is also likely to happen if Speaker Pelosi’s passes into law. There are other ways to lower out-of-pocket costs for patients at the pharmacy counter, and Congress should explore those before embracing such a drastic measure.

Sandy Royer

Kennett Square