, Columnist
Pelosi Calls Pharma’s Bluff on Drug Prices
Allowing Medicare to negotiate with drugmakers would barely slow the pace of innovation.
A plan to help Americans pay less.
Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Every time Congress tries to take on drug prices, it runs into the pharmaceutical lobby’s timeworn objection: Lowering prices even a penny would end all drug innovation, allowing cures to slip through our fingers and dimming the flickering hopes of desperate patients.
This doomsday argument has worked for decades, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s drug-price negotiation legislation is putting it to the test. A Congressional Budget Office analysis finds that the lower prices envisioned by her bill would barely slow new drug discovery at all.