Steve Issenman | May 29, 2024
America’s elected officials – Republicans and Democrats, from the Northeast and Southwest, representing big states and small – all care deeply about making the world a better place. But while their perspectives may sharply differ on many issues, they or a loved one – a parent, a child, a spouse, a best friend – have at one time all been a patient in need.
Hopefully, those medical needs have been ones that modern treatments can address. These medical needs can be and often are life-threatening, either in the short term (a heart attack, an aggressive cancer, an unmanageable infection or virus) or in the long term (heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s). But at one point, all those medical conditions had no treatments or cures, leaving patients and their families with no hope.
Without these modern medical treatments – from the most common items in our bathroom vanities to the most complex MRI machines, biologic medicines, flu testing strips, antibiotics, or chemotherapies – our lives and those of our loved ones would be at the mercy of nature and chance. In 1900, life expectancy in the U.S. was only 47 years. Through medical innovation over the past 125 years, life expectancy now stands at 76 years – a 62% increase.
New Jersey’s life sciences – medical device, biotech, pharmaceutical, and diagnostic companies – have been at the forefront of these medical discoveries and advances for over a century. Our state is a big part of the reason we and our loved ones can survive diagnoses and conditions that were life-ending only a few short years ago.
But balancing the need to ensure these medical advances are affordable to the patients who currently need them while still being able to invest in future advances that will save future patients is a very delicate and complicated – but critical – task. Daily, elected officials on both sides of the political spectrum must navigate this balance to protect current patients while also protecting those future patients who currently or one day will suffer from a diagnosis that doesn’t yet have a treatment.
Most of our policymakers do so with thoughtful, measured, and informed approaches that balance these immediate needs with policies that foster New Jersey’s life sciences ecosystem, allowing us to continue finding new treatments and cures that will save even more patients’ lives.