{"id":3597,"date":"2019-03-13T14:04:32","date_gmt":"2019-03-13T18:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/?p=3597"},"modified":"2019-03-13T14:04:32","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T18:04:32","slug":"price-controls-put-americans-health-at-stake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/?p=3597","title":{"rendered":"Price Controls Put Americans\u2019 Health At stake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Price Controls Put Americans\u2019 Health At stake<\/strong> <em>By Peter J. Pitts *<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>CHRONIQUEUR INVIT\u00c9\/GUEST COLLUMNIST<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Scientists searching for cures to cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer\u2019s, and other deadly illnesses may soon lose their funding, due to a misguided proposal from Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The proposal would gradually reduce Medicare\u2019s reimbursement rate for advanced drugs administered in hospitals and doctor\u2019s offices by 30 percent. Sec. Azar claims these price controls, \u201cwill save $17 billion in Medicare drug spending over the next five years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Price controls would save the government money, at least initially. But the cuts to research funding would make it much harder for scientists to discover the cures of tomorrow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Drug research is ludicrously expensive and fraught with pitfalls. Most research projects fail in the lab. And roughly nine in ten experimental drugs that emerge from the lab and enter human trials fail to gain FDA approval. This high failure rate explains why it takes almost $3 billion to develop just one drug.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Unlike most European nations, which impose strict price controls on medicines, the United States has a relatively free market for drugs. The ability to earn a sizeable return on successful drugs explains why a majority of world\u2019s new drugs are invented in America. America\u2019s researchers are currently developing more than 3,000 new medicines.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Price controls would halt this medical progress. They\u2019d make it nearly impossible for research companies to earn a return on their initial investments. As a result, the investors who currently fund drug research would redirect their capital to other business opportunities that offer better returns.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Consider how price controls have wrecked drug development in Europe. In the 1970s, more than 55 percent of all new drugs were developed in Europe. Just 31 percent were developed in America.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Now, those statistics have reversed, largely due to Europe\u2019s ever-stricter price controls, which have made America evermore attractive for drug researchers. From 2001 to 2010, the United States generated more than half of all new medicines developed globally; Europe accounted for just one third.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Medical breakthroughs could save patients, and the government, billions of dollars by preventing or curing chronic disease. Approximately 1,500 innovative treatments targeting Alzheimer\u2019s, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke are currently in development. If researchers produced one successful treatment that delayed the onset of Alzheimer\u2019s by five years, the government could save over $200 billion annually by 2050.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">American patients have some of the best health outcomes in the world precisely because we\u2019ve avoided the pitfalls of socialist price controls.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">* Peter J. Pitts, a former FDA Associate Commissioner, is President of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris Descartes Medical School.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Cet article est publi\u00e9 par l\u2019hebdomadaire Ha\u00efti-Observateur, \u00e9dition du 13 mars 2019 et se trouve en <strong>P 12,<\/strong> et se trouvera\u00a0\u00e0\u00a0: <a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/H-O-13-march-2019-1.pdf\">http:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/H-O-13-march-2019-1.pdf<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Price Controls Put Americans\u2019 Health At stake By Peter J. Pitts * CHRONIQUEUR INVIT\u00c9\/GUEST COLLUMNIST Scientists searching for cures to cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer\u2019s, and other deadly illnesses may soon lose their funding, due to a misguided proposal from Secretary of&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10,53],"tags":[162,943,1227,1495,1584,1651,2097,2202,2544,2746],"class_list":["post-3597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglais","category-chronique","category-usa","tag-alzheimer","tag-diabetes","tag-fda","tag-haiti-observateur","tag-human","tag-investment","tag-medicine","tag-money","tag-pitts","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}