Statement of Robert K. Coughlin President & CEO of MassBio on the Trump Administration’s Executive Order Forcing Medicare to Adopt International Prices for Prescription Drugs

Jul 27, 2020

“At a time when America’s biopharmaceutical industry, led by small and emerging companies, are racing to find treatments and vaccines for the worsening COVID-19 crisis and help patients across the country and the world, the Trump Administration’s Executive Order to force Medicare to adopt the lowest price available in any “economically comparable” country is irresponsible and harmful. America is the world leader in developing breakthrough therapies and cures and there is a reason that over half of all the science and drug development related to COVID-19 is coming from the U.S.

“The debate over the significant negative impact of this type of proposal is not new. Just last year, the White House Council of Economic Advisors found that as many as 100 fewer medicines would enter the market over the next decade as a result of similar foreign price control policies being debated by Congress. Implementation of this Order will mean the research into the hardest to crack scientific questions from COVID-19 to Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s, pancreatic cancer, heart disease, and others will be severely and permanently limited because the return on investment no longer exists. I strongly urge the Trump Administration to rescind this misguided policy approach.”

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