Health Care
Blog
How can we make drugs more affordable without sacrificing future cures?
How can we make drugs more affordable without sacrificing future cures? To a large extent, the current system works fairly well already to make most of the drugs that Americans take affordable. And that’s because of our robust generics market. Around 90% of prescriptions filled each year are for generics ...
Commentary
Medicare for All remains a disaster proposition
Medicare for All is poised for a comeback. Earlier this month, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the former head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, released polling data showing strong support for the idea among Democrats. Jayapal’s renewed push for socialized medicine comes as many Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate are putting ...
Commentary
Terrible Effects of Medicare Price Controls Are Here
Medicare will impose price controls on prescription drugs for the first time when the calendar flips to January. Even before those controls formally take effect, the damage is already being done. The scheme has begun to hollow out America’s biomedical research ecosystem. Patients will pay the price — in the ...
Commentary
What America Needs from a GOP Healthcare Package
The U.S. House just passed legislation that will help make health insurance more affordable — without extending the enhanced premium subsidies for exchange coverage that Democrats enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The House action comes on the heels of votes on two measures in the Senate: one from Democrats that ...
Blog
Do price controls affect which drugs patients have access to and how soon?
Do price controls affect which drugs patients have access to and how soon? They absolutely do. Just look at the situation in Europe. For years, drug companies have been choosing to withhold certain medicines from European markets rather than accept the price constraints imposed by governments there. As a result, ...
Health Care
New PRI Brief: Patent Taxes Threaten America’s Most Productive Engine of Growth
SACRAMENTO. (December 22, 2025) — The free-market Pacific Research Institute today released an issue brief finding that the Trump administration’s proposed 50% tax on patent revenue from inventions created using federal grants would disincentivize universities from expending the time, money, and effort to engage in federally-funded research. “Universities respond to ...
Blog
How do price controls damage innovation?
What role do intellectual property laws play in encouraging innovation? They are absolutely essential. IP protections like patents reward those who succeed in creating new medicines and ushering them through the regulatory approval process. They do this by guaranteeing that the IP rights holder behind a new drug will have ...
Commentary
Chaos At The FDA Benefits America’s Rivals—At The Expense Of America’s Patients
Chaos has become the norm at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And it’s putting American patients, not to mention our country’s world-leading life sciences sector, at risk. Earlier this year, roughly 3,500 FDA employees were laid off. The agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which oversees prescription and ...
Commentary
Democrats Can’t End Private-Sector Drug Innovation Fast Enough
In November, a group of Democrats in the U.S. House made clear that they’ll sacrifice medical innovation for lower drug prices if they ever reclaim Congress. Patients today and tomorrow will be the losers in that trade. Read the op-ed here.
Commentary
The real story behind Trump’s GLP-1 price cut: Markets still rule
President Donald Trump just announced deals with drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk that will yield lower prices for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs dispensed through Medicare and Medicaid. Both firms have also agreed to sell the drugs at lower prices on Trump’s yet-to-be-developed online marketplace for prescription drugs, TrumpRx. Lilly and ...
How can we make drugs more affordable without sacrificing future cures?
How can we make drugs more affordable without sacrificing future cures? To a large extent, the current system works fairly well already to make most of the drugs that Americans take affordable. And that’s because of our robust generics market. Around 90% of prescriptions filled each year are for generics ...
Medicare for All remains a disaster proposition
Medicare for All is poised for a comeback. Earlier this month, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the former head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, released polling data showing strong support for the idea among Democrats. Jayapal’s renewed push for socialized medicine comes as many Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate are putting ...
Terrible Effects of Medicare Price Controls Are Here
Medicare will impose price controls on prescription drugs for the first time when the calendar flips to January. Even before those controls formally take effect, the damage is already being done. The scheme has begun to hollow out America’s biomedical research ecosystem. Patients will pay the price — in the ...
What America Needs from a GOP Healthcare Package
The U.S. House just passed legislation that will help make health insurance more affordable — without extending the enhanced premium subsidies for exchange coverage that Democrats enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The House action comes on the heels of votes on two measures in the Senate: one from Democrats that ...
Do price controls affect which drugs patients have access to and how soon?
Do price controls affect which drugs patients have access to and how soon? They absolutely do. Just look at the situation in Europe. For years, drug companies have been choosing to withhold certain medicines from European markets rather than accept the price constraints imposed by governments there. As a result, ...
New PRI Brief: Patent Taxes Threaten America’s Most Productive Engine of Growth
SACRAMENTO. (December 22, 2025) — The free-market Pacific Research Institute today released an issue brief finding that the Trump administration’s proposed 50% tax on patent revenue from inventions created using federal grants would disincentivize universities from expending the time, money, and effort to engage in federally-funded research. “Universities respond to ...
How do price controls damage innovation?
What role do intellectual property laws play in encouraging innovation? They are absolutely essential. IP protections like patents reward those who succeed in creating new medicines and ushering them through the regulatory approval process. They do this by guaranteeing that the IP rights holder behind a new drug will have ...
Chaos At The FDA Benefits America’s Rivals—At The Expense Of America’s Patients
Chaos has become the norm at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And it’s putting American patients, not to mention our country’s world-leading life sciences sector, at risk. Earlier this year, roughly 3,500 FDA employees were laid off. The agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which oversees prescription and ...
Democrats Can’t End Private-Sector Drug Innovation Fast Enough
In November, a group of Democrats in the U.S. House made clear that they’ll sacrifice medical innovation for lower drug prices if they ever reclaim Congress. Patients today and tomorrow will be the losers in that trade. Read the op-ed here.
The real story behind Trump’s GLP-1 price cut: Markets still rule
President Donald Trump just announced deals with drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk that will yield lower prices for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs dispensed through Medicare and Medicaid. Both firms have also agreed to sell the drugs at lower prices on Trump’s yet-to-be-developed online marketplace for prescription drugs, TrumpRx. Lilly and ...
