Liberal Spending Plan a “Poison Pill” for Pharma

With an explosion of illegal immigration, surging crime, less energy, more inflation and rising racial tensions, combined with the Biden Administration yielding a defeat in Afghanistan, how could things get any worse?

They can, according to Project 21 member Deroy Murdock:

Next stop: Your medicine chest.

In a Fox News commentary, Deroy exposes the literal “poison pill” in Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending package.

Trying to pay for some of this spending by imposing new taxes and regulations on drug makers, he notes, “would blackmail this sector, chop into its bottom line and torpedo research and development into future therapies.” This would happen through a tax on gross revenues (not profits), and drug companies being forced to sell their products at Medicare-for-All prices. Deroy writes that this would significantly impact the health of the American people.

According to a study by the health care consulting firm Avalare, the Biden plan would deprive drug makers of an estimated $1.65 trillion in revenue and affect 550 different medications. And while some people might support this – thinking it will only inconvenience the rich and famous lifestyles of Big Pharma CEOs – Deroy remarks: “If only the world were so cartoonishly simple.”

“Punching the drug industry in the mouth gives regular patients bloody lips,” Deroy writes. “If H.R. 3 slices drug companies’ incomes, they will have less money to create new and better drugs.” Those taxes will stifle innovation. Merck – the company that combats asthma with Singulair, cholesterol with Vytorin and diabetes with Januvia – reported that it expects to see its research and development budget halved if Biden, Pelosi and Schumer prevail. Deroy put it simply and soberly:

A vaccine against the common cold? A pill that stops miscarriages? A cure for prostate cancer? Gummies that reverse Alzheimer’s? H.R. 3 could entomb such inventions in their test tubes.

Imagine if this sort of environment existed before the COVID pandemic. “Operation Warp Speed” couldn’t have gotten out of first gear!

To read all of Deroy’s commentary at the Fox News website, click here.