WASHINGTON, D.C. (September 13, 2020) – Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America president and CEO Stephen J. Ubl issued the following statement:

“PhRMA is committed to working with all stakeholders, including elected officials across the ideological spectrum, to find market-based, competitive reforms to the challenges facing our health care system and patients. The focus of any reforms must be on lowering costs for patients, ensuring patients’ access to medicines, addressing the misaligned incentives in the pharmaceutical supply chain and protecting the critical work being done to end COVID-19. Unfortunately, instead of pursuing these reforms the White House has doubled down on a reckless attack on the very companies working around the clock to beat COVID-19.

“The Administration has chosen to pursue the most favored nation policy – an irresponsible and unworkable policy that will give foreign governments a say in how America provides access to treatments and cures for seniors and people struggling with devastating diseases. What’s worse is that they are now expanding the policy to include medicines in both Medicare Part B and Part D, an overreach that further threatens America’s innovation leadership and puts access to medicines for tens of millions of seniors at risk. Rather than emulating countries that allow politicians to arbitrarily decide what medicines are worth and what diseases are worth investing in, we should use existing trade enforcement tools to prevent them from freeloading off American innovation.

“We must not gamble on America’s need for continued medical progress, for a strong U.S. economy or on our ability to win the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.” 

About PhRMA

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) represents the country’s leading innovative biopharmaceutical research companies, which are devoted to discovering and developing medicines that enable patients to live longer, healthier and more productive lives. Since 2000, PhRMA member companies have invested nearly $1 trillion in the search for new treatments and cures, including an estimated $83 billion in 2019 alone.

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