WASHINGTON, DC - Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) is joining Energy and Commerce Republican Leader Greg Walden (R-OR) for a video series aimed at providing the facts on Speaker Pelosi’s partisan plan for fewer cures.
In the seventh video in the series released today, titled “GOP Solutions: Unleashing American Innovation," Walden and Crenshaw discuss why so many Americans struggling with life-threatening or debilitating diseases rely on innovation for hope, and why Speaker Pelosi’s drug pricing scheme would make it incredibly difficult to deliver the cures they need. Walden and Crenshaw stress the importance of upholding America’s standing as the global leader in medical innovation, a reputation that will be undone if H.R. 3 ever becomes law.
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Full Transcript
Crenshaw: One thing you notice the most is the bigger the company, the more they like regulations, because it keeps their competition out. I don’t know why Democrats don’t know that.
Walden: I think Jamie Dimon said something to that effect with the whole Dodd-Frank, enormous regulation. He said it put up a moat around his company because they were big enough. They didn’t like it, but they could work through it. I want those biotechs, those scientists, those small start-up scientists working in some lab or in some university or some small company to go, “Why don’t we try this, nobody’s done that." By golly, that’s where they find a cure. Dr. Brian Druker at Oregon Health & Sciences University developed a drug called Gleevec, that deals with stomach cancer. I’ve talked to him several times and he said, “Everybody said don’t go down this path, so I went down that path." Guess what, he discovered this cure for a certain type of stomach cancer.
Crenshaw: Our job is to create a system where there’s incentive to do that. Where there’s not punishment for doing that. I don’t know why anybody would get into that, risk their livelihood, risk what is potentially billions and billions of dollars for a system that will simply say, “Hey, thanks for the efforts but we’re not going to reward you for it."
Walden: And most of these paths do end up in a dead end. So, all this investment that takes place to find that new cure, like they’re trying to do with Alzheimer’s, they’ve all ended up in dead ends. But they keep trying. And then if you win, if you find that cure, that new medicine, then the Constitution says that’s your intellectual property and you get a certain limited length of time to recoup your costs and make money on it. And then it’s open for competition.
Crenshaw: If you do it dishonestly, we have some solutions to fix that too.
Walden: That’s right. But once we get to that point where there should be competition, then there should be competition and that’s what we’re trying to fix. But in the meantime, if you invented, I’ll go back to Apple, if you invented the iPhone, you should have a right to that intellectual property. You do under American law and you do for patent protection. And that’s why so much of the world’s innovation occurs in America. And my fear is we’re going to drive this overseas. We just had a hearing in Energy & Commerce recently that looks at what’s happening on production of generic drugs and others in overseas production facilities where we have lack of ability to do adequate inspections. This is a bipartisan investigation we’re engaged in. We don’t have the resources to look at every one of those labs and do everything we need to be doing. We’re finding some bad actors and some bad things being put in our supply chain and we’re becoming completely dependent on manufacturers in other countries for life-saving, basic, even mostly generic drugs. If you go through this, you’re going to drive all of that into the welcoming arms of China or somewhere else. They will now own the patents, they don’t have to operate under American law.
Crenshaw: And strategic leverage over us from a national security perspective is an even worse thing.
The eighth and final video in the series will be released on Friday.
FULL VIDEO SERIES
Watch each video in the #FewerCures Facts series using the links below:
1. “Impact on Cures"
2. “Tax on Cures & Impact on Innovators"
3. “Debunking the Dems’ VA Talking Point"
4. “Debunking the Dems’ Research Talking Point"
5. “GOP Solutions: Insulin Savings"
6. “GOP Solutions: The Path Forward"
