Fewer drugs for cancer, diabetes, rare diseases, and other conditions would be developed, and Illinois would lose 58,065 jobs
Today Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA), and Education and Labor Committee Chairman Robert “Bobby” Scott (D-VA) introduced the Democratic leadership’s drug pricing bill for the 117th Congress, H.R. 3, the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act, modeled after similarly dangerous legislation from the 116th Congress.
The Council of State Bioscience Associations (CSBA) recently released data analyzing the potential impact of foreign reference pricing on America’s biopharmaceutical ecosystem, including investment, drug development, access to lifesaving medicines, future biomedical innovation, and the economic health of the life sciences industry in Illinois.
The analysis conducted by Vital Transformation shows that implementing foreign reference pricing, as H.R. 3 proposed to do, would undermine America’s world-class innovative biopharmaceutical research and development. Thousands of companies are working to develop revolutionary treatments and cures for patients around the world, and these treatments would be jeopardized by proposals like H.R.3.
Should legislation such as H.R. 3 go into effect, the analysis found that if H.R. 3 had been in place over the last 10 years:
- The number of medicines developed by small and emerging biotechs – companies that would face a marked reduction in capital investments as a result of HR3 – would have dropped by 90% or more, from 68 approved medicines to 7 or fewer.
- Illinois Biopharmaceutical industry job losses alone would total more than 9,592, with total job losses across the economy of more than 58,065 when indirect effects are included.
- Illinois would also lose $18 billion in venture and other partnerships, with a total economic impact of $17 billion for the state economy.
“In the past few years, there has been tremendous growth and investment in the biomedical community in Illinois,” said John Conrad, President & CEO of iBIO “foreign reference pricing would be devastating to Illinois’ patient and biomedical community, disproportionally impacting new treatments in rare diseases, oncology, and neurology and create large investment ecosystem losses to smaller companies.”
iBIO supports patient-oriented solutions that lower out-of-pocket costs for Americans, maintain access to the latest therapies, and fuel the cures of tomorrow.
See full state impact here.
Real the full report here.