30 September 2015 - Drug prices are news again. Politicians are right to be angry at isolated drug price gouging where bad actors push exorbitant prices, where no innovation is present. Oncologists are right to worry as well how the system can afford multiple therapies that seem to be priced sky-high.

But there is a downside to politicking with a broad brush. When lawmakers demagogue the price issue alone with talk of price caps and controls, markets crash, money for innovative cures dries up, clinical trials get pushed off, and people waiting for cures actually die. Yes, they die. When you are sick, weeks and months matter. Real unintended consequences that impact real innovators, real patients and actually penalize those who are necessary to reduce healthcare costs by inventing and financing the development of more effective therapies.

It happened in 1993. Price cap talk without thinking of the consequence. No legislation was ever passed, but companies developing HIV cures and promising cancer therapies shut down. In the last two weeks over $150 billion of value has disappeared in biotechnology, most of it not in the companies abusing the system, but in companies developing cures for childhood leukemia, Alzheimer’s, autism, breast cancer, and AIDS. Think of desperately sick kids, moms dying of breast cancer, grandma who can’t remember her child. That is what this is about. We need cures.

For more details, go to: http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2015/09/30/drug-price-demagoguery-could-hurt-patients/