a national disaster

Special to the Chronicle

As the CEO of a woman-owned pharmaceutical maker in Lexington County with nearly 2,000 employees, I understand that innovative drugs are only life-changing if patients have access to them.

Tackling high health care costs is extremely complicated. To make lasting change that benefits all patients will require a practical, bipartisan approach in Washington.

To see long-term patient savings, Congress must support negotiated savings by pharmaceutical companies shared directly with patients, increase transparency in costs for the entire health care system and promoting value-based payment for patients.

As an employer who bears the brunt of bad legislation, it concerns me to see our health care problems become politicized by our leaders. It seems as if there is no end to the talk of nonsensical proposals from lawmakers who aspire to fantastical ends without considering the real means necessary to make them happen or the unintended consequences likely to result.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Lower Drug Cost Now Act (HR 3) is the most radical bill to be birthed by the politics of health care. The speaker’s bill will lower drug costs by blowing up our health care system. It will put the future of the pharmaceutical industry in the hands of the federal government.

The speaker plans to lower costs with European-style government price setting.

HR 3 would set both a “ceiling price” and a “target price” for new drugs. The ceiling price would be based on the average price in 6 foreign countries with government-run health care systems and the target price would equal the lowest price of a medicine in any of the same 6 countries.

While she is telling the public that this is not price setting but “price negotiation.” What she fails to tell is that if a company does not accept the price the federal government sets, they are hit with a tax up to 95% of the sale of the medicine. If that isn’t price control I don’t know what is.

HR 3 would embolden the US government to dictate which diseases are worthy of research and investment. This would discourage investors who devote almost $100 billion each year to research and development of new cures and treatments.

Her bill would upend the supply chain by decimating the federal reimbursement rate, undercutting makers like me. What seems to be lost on Speaker Pelosi is that there is already a low margin on manufactured drugs. Her bill would reduce the number of critically needed medications we can make, creating the need for fewer jobs.

When a drug makes a big difference, you can’t put a price on that. Our industry wholly support lowering costs for patients but the Pelosi bill is not the right prescription for American patients or businesses.

Lou Kennedy is owner and CEO of Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corp. in West Columbia.

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