New drugs … are they really all that? 

If you’ve been paying attention to the various markups of H.R. 3 over the last few weeks you’ve noticed Republicans beating Democrats over the head with the recent prediction from the Congressional Budget Office that the bill will result in eight to 15 fewer drugs over the next 10 years. That’s not a great statistic for Democrats who have tried to insist that their bill wouldn’t harm drug development, but counterintuitively, some Democrats are starting to own that point — arguing that lower drug prices is a worthwhile tradeoff for less innovation. For more on that, read Lev’s story here. 

But just for the thought experiment: What if the bill would actually block far more drugs from coming to market? Say the bill would result in 20 or even 30 new drugs never being launched — would Democrats still own it?

There’s some basis to my speculation: Over the last few weeks I’ve spoken to health economists who argue that number is likely much higher, mainly because CBO’s analysis only tracks the bill's potential impact on Medicare. 

“I don’t envy the CBO here, which [has] to come up with a number for something that might be a somewhat unanswerable question,” Craig Garthwaite, a Northwestern University economist who has spoken out against H.R. 3, told me. “I think the CBO estimate is clearly an underestimate on the effect on innovation.”

Just some food for thought ...