A critical lesson from COVID-19: Prioritize innovation

There wasn’t a dry eye in the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s hearing room recently as the Health Subcommittee listened to testimonies from patients and caregivers pressing Congress to do all it can to enable the private sector to develop therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. 

One of the stories was from a constituent in my district who is the fourth known generation in her family suspected to have Huntington’s disease. With my roles this Congress as the top Republican of the Health Subcommittee and as co-leader of the House Republicans’ Healthy Future Task Force, I’m looking for ways to increase medical innovation for treatments and cures for diseases that have none and also ensure Americans are able to access them.

One of the most important lessons we have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is we cannot afford to sacrifice medical innovation. We had safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines developed and being distributed in the U.S. within a year of our country’s first laboratory-confirmed case of this novel virus. The previous record for developing a vaccine was four years. Vaccines did not come as quickly in the European Union because the E.U. prioritized price restrictions over investing in innovation. America must not follow this path.

Discovering a cure for hepatitis C, treatments for cystic fibrosis, and a way to use a body’s immune system to fight cancer are examples of how far we’ve come. Congress has played an integral role in advancing innovation by funding basic research and clearing red tape. Since I have been in Congress, we have modernized our healthcare innovation infrastructure, increased funding for the National Institutes of Health to foster research, and given the Food and Drug Administration authorities to prioritize and expedite the review of therapies for diseases that have none. We need to continue to build on this work, not reverse it. 

While medical innovation can save someone’s life, it can also be expensive. We need to reduce legal and regulatory hurdles for insurers and other payers to get more cost-effective deals for patients. One solution is to facilitate value-based payment arrangements, especially in Medicaid, to help vulnerable patients access life-saving and potential curative treatments. Medicaid reform has been a focus of mine since serving as a state senator in the Kentucky General Assembly. Value-based payment arrangements would reform Medicaid by ensuring states are not on the hook for expensive therapies that do not help patients. 

I also support the Lower Costs, More Cures Act to help patients access prescription drugs. This would help prevent drug companies from gaming the system to block competition from the market. For seniors this would cap insulin costs and out-of-pocket spending for prescription drugs in Medicare Part D, and it would reduce certain costs for cancer and other expensive treatments.

All of the provisions in the Lower Costs, More Cures Act are bipartisan, but House Democrats want to go further by “negotiating” drug costs under a bill known as H.R. 3. If a drug company does not accept the government-mandated price for a drug determined by a bureaucrat, then the “negotiation” is taxing up to 95% of that drug’s revenue from the previous year. It would result in fewer cures coming to market, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Destroying innovation would directly impact patients hoping for new cures.

Thanks to efforts to advance and prioritize innovation in the U.S., we have new therapies being developed and safe, highly effective COVID-19 vaccines for Americans to live longer, healthier lives. While debating ways to make innovation more affordable, Congress must keep in mind patients are demanding that we accelerate development of treatments, not jeopardize it.