WASHINGTON, D.C. – Recently, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Senate Republicans expressed concerns with the establishment of a permanent government drug price-setting program, funded by billions of taxpayer dollars in the partisan Inflation Reduction Act, and raised questions regarding federal health agencies’ plans for program implementation. 

In a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the Senators highlight the outsized risks the impending government pricing setting scheme poses for patients, health care providers, small businesses, manufacturers and the American economy as a whole, and urge the officials to weigh impacts on health care access, research and development (R&D), innovation, and domestic manufacturing. 

The senators wrote, “As the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has confirmed, the government price controls codified under the recently enacted reconciliation legislation have the potential to increase launch prices for new medications, as well as to trigger fewer new drug approvals in the coming years.” 

“Other independent analyses have projected even more catastrophic consequences, from hundreds of thousands of domestic job losses to hundreds of billions in forgone R&D dollars,” the senators continued. “The innovation ecosystem that has made the United States the world’s unquestioned life sciences leader, bolstered by thousands of startups and small businesses, may wither under this partisan legislation, particularly in the absence of careful, deliberative implementation and assertive, consumer-oriented oversight.”

Read the full letter here.

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