Lower drug prices would result in TWO fewer drugs
David Bluementhal et al. , 10-1-2021, "The U.S. Can Lower Drug Prices Without Sacrificing Innovation", The Common Wealth Fund, (Dr. Blumenthal is formerly the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief Health Information and Innovation Officer at Partners Healthcare System in Boston (now Mass General Brigham).) https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2021/us-can-lower-drug-prices-without-sacrificing-innovation Accessed 7-28-2024, /hcc
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that reducing the pharmaceutical industry’s revenues would result in two fewer drugs in the next decade, 23 fewer in the following decade, and 34 fewer drugs in the third decade. Predictions 20 to 30 years out are necessarily imprecise, but in any case, many of those projected new therapies would likely be neither novel nor more valuable than existing drugs. That is, they wouldn’t be innovative.
Many would be modified versions of existing drugs, created merely to extend patent protections and thus monopolies over existing therapeutics. When Medicare Part D dramatically increased the pharmaceutical industry’s revenues 18 years ago, major drug companies directed their drug-development efforts primarily at drug classes where there were already five or more products on the market. Currently, the majority of new patents filed by large pharmaceutical companies are modifications of drugs already on the market.