ALEXANDRIA, VA – This week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D - California) introduced H.R. 3, her long-anticipated, hyper-partisan scheme to impose a socialized drug pricing system and reorder American medical care to her liking.  In response, Center for Individual Freedom ("CFIF") President Jeffrey Mazzella issued the following statement:

"CFIF unambiguously opposes Nancy Pelosi’s legislation, which amounts to the worst and most far-reaching attempt yet witnessed to impose government control over Americans’ healthcare access.

"Pelosi’s proposal includes such mechanisms as foreign price controls, compulsory arbitration with government bureaucrats, a complete restructuring the popular Medicare Part D program and what amounts to a retroactive 95% tax on hundreds of the most commonly-used medicines in America.  As CFIF has long highlighted, America enjoys – by far – the most innovative pharmaceutical industry in the world, accounting for two-thirds of all new lifesaving and life-improving drugs globally.  But by importing price controls from foreign nations – which ignore drug patents to extort compliance – to America rather than exporting our more effective free market policies to their shores, American consumers would begin suffering the same drawbacks that consumers in those nations do.  Namely, unavailability of those critical lifesaving and life-improving drugs.

"As even the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledges, price controls suffocate innovation and delay the arrival of new drugs, or deny them entirely.  It’s therefore no accident that nations imposing price controls enjoy a fraction of the new pharmaceuticals that Americans access, and that America outpaces those countries in terms of cancer survival rates and other benefits.  Pelosi’s bill would also jeopardize nearly $1 trillion of pharmaceutical investment, research and development.

"All of this is far too high a price for Americans to pay on behalf of Nancy Pelosi’s socialized medicine pet project.  CFIF therefore opposes her proposed legislation in the strongest terms, applauds Members of Congress who have already voiced opposition to it and encourages all Americans to contact their Representatives and Senators to express their opposition as well."

CFIF is a constitutional and free market advocacy organization with over 300,000 supporters and activists nationwide. 

###