Crenshaw Joins Ranking Member Walden in Debunking Pelosi Drug Pricing Plan
WASHINGTON, DC – Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) joined Energy and Commerce Republican Leader Greg Walden (R-OR) in a video series aimed at providing the facts on Speaker Pelosi's partisan plan for fewer cures.
"Speaker Pelosi's partisan bill is packed with bad policy that will drive out innovation and result in fewer cures available to patients suffering from diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, or ALS. The American people deserve the truth - not misleading talking points from Democrats - about how this bill will impact their lives. That's why we released this video series," said Walden and Crenshaw.
In the first video in the series, titled "Impact on Cures," Walden and Crenshaw describe the chilling effect Speaker Pelosi's bill will have on the development and delivery of new cures.
Watch by clicking the below image, or by clicking here:
Full Transcript
Crenshaw: So, here’s the truth on H.R. 3. This is a complicated one because it’s about lowering drug prices. Seems like something we should all agree on, and we do, that’s the end goal, but it’s complicated on how to get there. So I am here with an expert, Representative Greg Walden and you’re the Ranking Member on Energy and Commerce and you’ve been working on this for quite a while. So, I want to ask you a bunch of questions about H.R. 3.
Walden: Alright.
Crenshaw: What the talking points are, and how to debunk those talking points because it’s not as simple as they say.
Walden: That’s right.
Crenshaw: We see this a lot with Democrats. It’s like, hey we all want lower drug prices, or we want higher wages, so just make the wages higher. Make the drug prices lower. It doesn’t really work that way in the real world. What’s the main problem? We keep hearing there’ll be fewer cures because of this. How does this stifle innovation?
Walden: Well we knew through, from the Congressional Budget Office, if half a billion to a trillion is taken out of the system, which some say can happen here, there’ll be 8 to 15 fewer medicines developed. We don’t know if that’s the cure to Alzheimer’s or Arthritis. We don’t know if that’s the solution to ALS or Parkinson’s, but we do know that 8 to 15 new medicines would not come about because this will depress innovation.
Crenshaw: So, this bill, it basically instructs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to, they say negotiate, but it’s not really a negotiation. They’re basically setting prices based on international price setting?
Walden: Yeah, within 6 countries internationally they say whatever you sell your drug there for, it has to be within a certain range of that. And then the Secretary negotiates. Which on its face sounds okay, that sounds good. What could be wrong with that? These are countries in Europe and okay fine. Well, there’s a lot of things wrong with that. First of all, I think you drive innovation out of America and probably into the hands of the Chinese. Because they want to do this and they’re not subject to any of this. Second, if you look for example in Germany, 67% of the new medicines that came to the U.S. consumers between 2011 and 2018 are not available in Germany.
Crenshaw: Right.
Walden: They’re delayed in the U.K., so you delay access by doing what the Democrats want to do and we know you poison innovation and you won’t get new medicines.
Crenshaw: We do have a problem.
Walden: We do.
Crenshaw: We have a problem with drug prices being too high and part of that problem is that the rest of the world takes advantage of us. We develop all the new drugs, we have all the innovation and a country like Germany will say ,’Okay, here’s our price, we’re not going to buy anything from you if you don’t sell it at that price’ and they can do that because they don’t have that choice that we have in America. And we really do, we do have a choice between price setting and innovation and I don’t think that people would be supportive of this if they realized there’d be so many fewer cures.
Walden: Right.
The second video in the series, titled “Tax on Cures & Impact on Innovators” will be released later this week.
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