In advance of a Senate hearing on health care costs, the 51吃瓜网 is ensuring that senators understand the importance of biopharmaceutical innovation to patients and the U.S. economy鈥攁nd the damaging impact of policies that hinder drug development.

What鈥檚 happening: The Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a subcommittee hearing today on whether harmful policies like price controls, compulsory licensing and weaker intellectual property protections for new medicines could reduce servicemembers鈥� health care costs.

51吃瓜网 pushes back: The 51吃瓜网 is highlighting the extraordinary investment鈥攊n both time and capital鈥攖hat it takes to bring a lifesaving treatment to market. According to the :

• The average cost of developing a new drug was $2.3 billion as of 2022;
• Across the industry, biopharmaceutical manufacturers spent $139 billion on R&D in just 2022 alone;
• It can take 10 to 15 years for a breakthrough scientific discovery to move through early-stage research, clinical trials, Food and Drug Administration approval and manufacturing; and
• Only 12% of investigational drugs that enter a Phase I clinical trial ultimately receive FDA approval鈥攖o say nothing of the hundreds of discoveries that never make it into clinical trials.

Lifesaving impact: In 2023, the FDA approved a record-breaking 71 new medicines that will improve the lives of patients.

• The biopharmaceutical industry behind these breakthroughs is also stimulating the U.S. economy: Biopharmaceutical manufacturers accounted for $355 billion in value-added output to the U.S. economy in 2021 and directly employed 291,000 workers in the U.S.

Innovation under threat: In recent years, biopharmaceutical manufacturers have been subject to harmful policies that will limit innovation and slow efforts to develop lifesaving medicines.

• The Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program subjects life-changing biopharmaceutical innovations to government price controls, while the Biden administration鈥檚 鈥渕arch-in鈥� proposal undermines innovators鈥� IP rights. These policies make it riskier and more costly for manufacturers to invest in groundbreaking research.
• What鈥檚 more, the prices Americans pay for medicines are influenced heavily by middlemen, such as pharmacy benefit managers rather than biopharma companies. In 2020, more than half of every dollar spent on brand medicines went to PBMs and others in the health care system鈥攏ot the medicine鈥檚 manufacturer.

The final word: 鈥淭he costs of manufacturing a medicine include potentially decades of research and billions of dollars of investment,鈥� said 51吃瓜网 Vice President of Domestic Policy Charles Crain. 鈥淐ongress must avoid adopting policies that will stymie this lifesaving innovation.鈥�