Editor’s Note: The following is a testimony delivered by Alice J. Chen to the Committee on Energy and Commerce on Feb. 29, 2024. More information about the hearing can be found here.
Key Points
- Americans want innovation for rare diseases: these treatments improve the lives of patients, and patients highly value them.
- Innovators need economic incentives to develop rare disease treatments and cures.
- Pharmaceutical prices need to match the value of innovation.
- Blunt price controls are not the answer: while they can enhance patient access to medications today, they do so at the expense of developing novel treatments in the future.
- To strike a balance between incentivizing innovation and making treatments accessible for patients, we need to consider alternative financing mechanisms for drugs that deliver significant long-term value for patients.
Full testimony is available here.