Rep. Blake Moore touts Utah’s innovation in health care at congressional hearing in Salt Lake City

The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee held its latest field hearing at an unusual location: an active laboratory in Salt Lake City. Republican Utah Rep. Blake Moore said he praises Utah to his colleagues in Washington, D.C., every chance he gets.

“But it’s all talk until you actually get to show people it,” he told the Deseret News just before the congressional hearing.

Friday afternoon, he made his case for the state as more than a dozen Utah companies participated in a live science showcase, three floors below the hearing. They presented innovations like Blackrock Neurotech’s chip-like device to restore various bodily functions and research like the Huntsman Cancer Institute’s work to connect Utahns in rural areas with lifesaving health care.

Rep. Jason Smith, R-Miss., in his opening remarks, joked that Moore, who represents Utah’s 1st District, “is not shy about sharing how Utah could be a model for the rest of America at everything.”

“He is your advocate,” said Smith, “and he never stops.”

Republicans on the committee said that Democrats promise price control through their policies, but they also limit a company’s ability to “invest, find new cures and better treatments” that will bring down costs, Moore said.

Friday’s discussion among committee members centered on whether the Inflation Reduction Act will make health care more affordable and the ways in which treatment can reach remote areas.

Utah representatives get together for field hearing

Utah Reps. Burgess Owens and Celeste Maloy also participated in the hearing alongside Moore, the vice chair of the House Republican Conference. Owens, who represents Utah’s 4th District, joked he tells all his colleagues visiting the Beehive State that if they stay here long enough, they become Utahn, “so, let’s keep that up.”

Lab personnel at ARUP, University of Utah’s nonprofit reference laboratory, continued to work during the hearing, doing clinical tests for patients across the country right behind where the representatives sat. Adjacent to the hearing, trays of test tubes moved through large pre-analytic automation machines that test “all sorts of specimens,” Dr. Jonathan Gerzen, the chief medical officer and senior director of government affairs at ARUP laboratories, told the Deseret News.

Maloy, who represents Utah’s 2nd District, acknowledged she’s a newer member of Congress, and said in her short tenure she has received some of the best and worst news related to the health care industry. Constituents report struggling to afford medication or access pharmacies in rural areas.

“We’ve got families choosing between medical bills and mortgages,” she said.

Utah’s role in medical research

On the flip side, Utahns have increased access to telehealth and the state continues investing in groundbreaking research.

Kelvyn Cullimore, president and CEO of BioUtah, the trade association for the state’s life sciences industry and a witness at the hearing, pointed out that the first saliva test for the coronavirus was developed in Utah labs, and the state also manufactures important medical equipment.

“Utah is the third-fastest growing life science community in the country,” he said, adding it barely falls behind Massachusetts and Arizona.

In his testimony, Cullimore said, “Treatment for Parkinson’s disease, regenerative cell-based therapies that alleviate pain and restore function in patients with degenerative diseases of the spine, improved heart valve replacements, cutting edge diagnostics for chronic kidney disease, brain computer interface technology that would make Elon Musk jealous ... and more are all part of Utah life sciences world.”

How is Inflation Reduction Act impacting health care innovation?

Cullimore said he anticipates the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 to have a “chilling effect on research and development in the pharmaceutical field.”

The bill included provisions that allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices, shifted financial responsibility onto drug manufacturers and insurers and imposed a monetary penalty on drug manufacturers for hiking prices faster than inflation. But unintended consequences are reverberating through the industry, he said. The loss in revenue for drug manufacturers can also disincentivize them to invest in research and development.

Cullimore later in the hearing said the full impact of the Inflation Reduction Act hasn’t materialized yet. “It’s going to have an even greater chilling effect on research and development in the therapeutics field,” he said.

“I remain concerned ... about the law’s impact on medical innovation, particularly for rare diseases,” Moore said at the hearing. He added it could also result in increased use of step therapy, where insurers ask patients to try alternate medication before they can get the medication prescribed, fewer covered medicines by insurance companies and narrower pharmacy networks.

Dr. Heloisa Soares, an associate professor and medical director of the clinical trials office at Huntsman Cancer Institute, testified that step therapy has hugely affected how she cares for her patients. It requires her to prescribe less-than-ideal medicine that could have side effects, and this at times determines a patient’s decision to continue treatment.

Connecting rural Utah to advanced healthcare

Another concern that lawmakers discussed is bringing rural communities closer to lifesaving health care. Soares said at least 30% of her patients who come in for clinical trials live in rural areas.

Kasey Shakespeare, the assistant director for the Utah Center for Rural Health at Southern Utah University, testified about his newborn son suffering from Potters syndrome, a condition that keeps a fetus from growing kidneys. Prior to the baby’s birth, the Shakespeare family moved to Pasadena, California. They’ve also had to drive nine hours to Salt Lake City for appointments.

Maloy said she appreciated Shakespeare’s candor on such a personal issue. “Your story is a reminder that even when us rural kids grow up and can get jobs in our small hometowns, if anything goes wrong, we still have to move to urban areas where we can get medical treatment,” she said.

Maloy also asked Cullimore how the federal government can better support live sciences in Utah. He responded that the state identified this industry as one of the essential ones for development.

“Last legislative session, the legislature passed a life science Initiative bill to provide money to develop workforce specifically for life science needs, which can be very unique,” the CEO of BioUtah said. He noted the Youth Innovation Fund launched in the state to take technologies out of classrooms and present them to investors.

The federal government can contribute through tax credits for research and development, he said.

“The life science industry is probably the most regulated industry in the country, and finding ways to reduce those barriers will help bring products to market a lot faster,” he added. “Medicare itself could be a great sandbox for doing something.”