Let’s Keep the U.S. Biopharmaceutical Industry Strong

If COVID-19 has shown us anything, it’s that the world needs more new medicines to prevent and treat disease, not fewer. It’s no accident that the United States leads the world in discovering, developing, and bringing to market such innovations. Over time, the U.S. has built a policy ecosystem that has generated significant investment in biopharmaceutical R&D and encouraged scientific collaboration among private companies, public agencies, and academic researchers. 

As policy makers in Washington and our state capitols look for money to fund new priorities, they would do well to avoid measures that would weaken the U.S. biopharmaceutical industry’s ability to continue innovating. As the trade association PhRMA notes in this interesting blog post, opinion surveys show that the American public’s support for the pharmaceutical industry has doubled since COVID struck one year ago. What’s more, Americans overwhelmingly view a strong biopharmaceutical sector as a national security asset offering protection against a future pandemic.

And as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office observes in this just-issued report, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry’s investment in innovative R&D in 2019 was ten times larger (adjusting for inflation) than its average annual spend during the 1980s. The payoff? Approvals of novel medicines in the U.S. increased by more than 60% between 2010 and 2019 as compared with the previous decade. 

The CBO report warns that policy measures targeting drugs for cost-containment would likely result in less pharmaceutical R&D investment – and fewer new medicines. Just what we don’t need as we prepare to invest billions of dollars in a new push against cancer and other diseases, arm ourselves against future global health crises, and tackle rising rates of heart disease, diabetes and other chronic conditions.