Emulating European healthcare won’t win America the biotech race

WASHINGTON TIMES

As Washington debates new ways to make the nation’s healthcare system work better for Americans, policymakers should keep one question in mind: What would happen if the U.S. stopped being the world’s most attractive place to discover and develop new medicines?

The answer is not theoretical. Europe already ran that experiment.

For decades, the United States has been the global leader in medical innovation. American researchers, universities, investors and life sciences companies have produced treatments that transformed once-fatal diseases into manageable conditions. They have given hope to patients battling cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and numerous other illnesses.

That leadership did not happen by accident. It was the result of deliberate policy choices.

Strong intellectual property protections, a market that rewards scientific risk-taking, access to capital and a culture of innovation created an environment in which researchers and companies were willing to spend years and billions of dollars pursuing breakthroughs that they were not sure would succeed.

About 9 in 10 drug candidates that enter clinical trials never make it to approval. The few treatments that do reach patients must support an ecosystem built on extraordinary risk, long timelines and sustained investment.

That system has delivered enormous benefits: U.S. patients get new medicines for cancer and other serious diseases roughly three years earlier than patients in other wealthy countries. America’s life sciences industry supports more than 5 million jobs and has announced plans for more than $500 billion in manufacturing and infrastructure investment over the next decade.

Yet when policymakers weaken the incentives that support that system, investment does not simply disappear. It moves.

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