July 27, 2020 ― HealthCare Institute of New Jersey (HINJ) President and Chief Executive Officer Dean J. Paranicas today issued the following statement in response to President Donald Trump’s executive orders.
“America’s biopharmaceutical, medical technology and diagnostics companies, in concert with the public and academic sectors, are sprinting at a breakneck pace in harnessing their scientific and medical knowledge to combat the COVID-19 crisis. Amid this extraordinary mission, policies included in President Trump’s Executive Orders on drug pricing would undercut the very capabilities that are propelling that undertaking.
Indexing American drug prices to those of government-run systems would strike at the heart of medical innovation. Importing medicines from other countries would put American patients at risk– which is why no previous Secretary of Health and Human Services from either party has been willing to certify to the safety of imported medicines.
While some of the proposed Executive Orders would benefit patients – particularly by ensuring that rebates are actually passed on to patients instead of to middlemen in the health care system – the proposed importation of medicines from other countries as well as the indexing of American medicines would be bad for patients, bad for global health and bad for New Jersey’s economy.
New Jersey’s life sciences community has long supported efforts to increase patient access to the life-saving medicines, medical technologies, and diagnostic tools they work so hard to discover. We have offered responsible ways to lower prices for patients that would not devastate our ability to discover and develop new vaccines, treatments, and cures for the world’s most dreaded diseases and damage New Jersey’s innovation economy. The President’s Executive Orders pose the grave risk of doing just that while not effectively lowering costs for patients.
A better approach is for all stakeholders to work together and implement initiatives such as those we have suggested before that instead will protect patients, medical innovation and our state’s workforce and economy.”