Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Pelosi's Plan to Slash Drug Prices Will Backfire

Yes, prescription medicine costs too much. But stealth government price-setting isn’t the answer.

October 2, 2019 at 11:30 AM UTC

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

Better than what?
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced legislation last month to lower the price of prescription drugs. That’s a worthy and achievable goal. Unfortunately, she gave a misleading explanation of how the law would work, obscuring its probable counterproductive effects.

Instead of pushing down prices by forcing drug companies to compete more vigorously, it would put them in the hands of government bureaucrats in a way that’s likely to restrict innovation and reduce access to many important medications.