Drug price controls are already killing medical innovation

Cancer death rates have fallen by 25% since the turn of the century. Stage 4 cancer diagnoses — previously considered death sentences — are now survivable for many patients.

While my fellow oncologists and I would love to pat ourselves on the back for improved survival rates, the truth is that breakthrough therapies (not just brainy doctors) deserve much of the credit.

Doctors today are no smarter or harder working than a generation or two ago. But our tools are now vastly more powerful. A few decades ago, gut-wrenching chemotherapy was often the only treatment option. Today, physicians can prescribe advanced immunotherapies that obliterate tumors with minimal side effects.

Simply put, we’re in the early years of a medical golden age. But the Inflation Reduction Act is threatening to end it.

That 2022 law allows federal officials to impose price controls on an expanding list of medications.

Nonpartisan analyses routinely find that drug price controls deter biotech companies from investing in research and development, which ultimately leads to fewer new medicines. University of Chicago researchers estimate the IRA’s price controls will result in 135 fewer new drugs by 2039. Another study predicts 139 fewer drugs developed by 2034.

These foregone drugs mean fewer lives will be saved. According to the University of Chicago study, the drugs that never come to market because of the IRA would collectively save 331.5 million life-years by 2039.

This isn’t theoretical — companies are already cutting research programs. In 2023, the CEO of the pharmaceutical giant Novartis stated that his firm was dropping several early-stage cancer drugs due to the IRA. He directly attributed these choices to the drug price control programs, which “changes the whole economics” of the cancer medicine development cycle.

Similarly, the senior vice president of oncology for Astellas states that his company’s landmark prostate cancer study would’ve been virtually inconceivable under the IRA price control regime. His firm’s EMBARK trial launched in 2014 and included more than 1,000 patients, finding that a new drug significantly improved patients’ chances of living longer. Today, the IRA is stifling research on that scale.

There are more than 1,600 cancer treatments currently under investigation. It’s not yet clear how many will be dropped from further consideration because of the IRA’s malign influence on research and development decision-making. But that number is certainly not zero. And each one will represent a lost opportunity for my fellow oncologists to bring hope of a longer and healthier life to our patients.

Members of Congress are mostly not physicians, so they never had to take the Hippocratic oath to “do no harm.” If they had, they could never in good conscience have approved the IRA’s drug price controls.

Moshe Chasky , M.D., FACP, is a board-certified oncologist and hematologist with extensive experience in solid tumors and hematological malignancies treated in community setting. This piece originally ran in the Detroit News.

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