PhRMA takes on Pelosi's pricing plan

We’re seeing a strange juxtaposition in bioscience: Technology is accelerating at a marvelous pace, but political debate over drug pricing is threatening to hamper innovation — and set into motion a government-run health care system. That’s the view, anyway, of Stephen J. Ubl, president and CEO of biopharmaceutical trade group, PhRMA.

Achieving medical breakthroughs, he writes, is no easy task. It takes more than $90 billion of R&D investment each year, taking into account that 90% of clinical trials fail along the way.

Nancy Pelosi’s proposed new pricing plan, in particular, puts this system at risk, Ubl writes. The proposal, which is “unprecedented in size and scope,” also “opens the door for bureaucrats in the United States and foreign countries to determine the type of research companies should pursue and how and when patients can access new treatments and cures,” he says.