Statement by Healthcare Leadership Council President Mary R. Grealy on Presidential Executive Orders on Drug Pricing

For Immediate Release July 24, 2020

Members of the Healthcare Leadership Council have long shared this Administration’s objective to achieve more accessible, more affordable healthcare. Healthcare entities in every sector are working continuously on value-focused initiatives designed to improve health outcomes at greater cost-efficiency.

Regrettably, we cannot support the executive orders that were issued today. Today, for our nation and our future, biopharmaceutical innovation is an imperative. We need to encourage and ensure sufficient resources for the development of new treatments, cures, and vaccines. Provisions in today’s executive orders would take resources away from research and development with little to no commensurate gain for patients and consumers.

The International Pricing Index will simply import the heavy-handed price controls employed by foreign governments into our market-based healthcare system. This will have a disproportionate impact on smaller firms doing important innovative work on new treatments and therapies. The end result will be to deprive patient populations of the breakthrough medicines that can save and improve lives.

Drug importation, for good reason, has been consistently rejected by Republican and Democratic administrations because they could not guarantee that the health and safety of the American people can be protected if products originating from foreign countries are injected into our closed drug supply chain. The savings from importation are illusory, but the threats are not.

We do not believe Americans should be faced with a binary choice between affordability and innovation.  We will continue to support patient-friendly reforms and increased competition in the marketplace as tools to strengthen healthcare affordability.

Contact: Michael Freeman (202)449-3438 mfreeman@hlc.org