ALEXANDRIA, VA – Today, Democrats in the House of Representatives doubled down on Speaker Pelosi’s plan to impose a socialized drug pricing system that would import foreign price controls, stifle innovation and limit patient access by reintroducing H.R. 3, the deceptively-titled “Lower Drug Costs Now Act.”  What follows is a statement by CFIF President Jeffrey Mazzella: 

"CFIF unambiguously reiterates its opposition to this catastrophic legislation, which amounts to the worst and most far-reaching attempt yet to impose government control over Americans’ healthcare access.  

“As CFIF has been warning for years, H.R. 3 includes such mechanisms as foreign price controls, compulsory arbitration with government bureaucrats, a complete restructuring of the popular Medicare Part D program and what amounts to a retroactive 95% tax on many 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 importing price controls from foreign nations – which ignore drug patents to extort compliance – would result in American consumers suffering the same drawbacks that consumers in those nations do.  Namely, limited or no access to critical life-saving 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 only a fraction of the new pharmaceuticals that Americans access, and that the United States outpaces those countries in terms of cancer survival rates and other benefits.  This bill also jeopardizes tens of billions of dollars spent annually on research and development by the pharmaceutical industry.  

“All of this is far too high a price for Americans to pay for Nancy Pelosi’s socialized medicine pet project.”  

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

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