A Harris administration would be detrimental to biomedical innovation

America is the world leader in biomedical innovation. And a Kamala Harris administration represents an existential threat to that discovery and innovation, which will cost lives and jobs.

Innovation has long been driven by robust intellectual property protections, strong federal investments in medical research funding and supportive tax and regulatory policies. America produces nearly twice as many drugs as our European counterparts and nearly four times as many as Japan. This leadership has not only resulted in groundbreaking advancements in medicine, but also provided Americans with unprecedented access to new drugs. Between 2015 and 2021, 74 percent of novel active ingredients were approved in the U.S. before being approved in other countries. 

Vice President Kamala Harris is proposing radical policies that will undermine America’s continued success as a medical innovator. A video was recently uncovered from Harris’ failed 2020 presidential campaign which exposes her disturbing view of how the federal government should treat the patents of private companies.

“I will snatch their patent so that we [the federal government] will take over,” said Harris. “Yes, we can do that! The question is: ‘Do you have the will to do it?’ I have the will to do it.”

Harris’ admission that she’s willing to deliberately abuse the Bayh-Dole Act to achieve her goals is especially concerning. The very drafters of the law made clear that the intended purpose was to spur innovation, not give government the power to dictate prices, and this position has been repeatedly affirmed on a bipartisan basis.

This kind of approach is what you expect to see in dictatorships like Venezuela and China. Whether you call it socialism or communism, it’s certainly not capitalism — nor is it mainstream. Even Howard Dean, an avowed progressive who chaired the Democratic National Committee, has criticized the Biden-Harris efforts to erode patent protections as “the wrong way to reduce drug prices” that threatens U.S. global leadership, our manufacturing base and our life-saving research and development ecosystem.

If Harris gets her way, laying waste to intellectual property rights for American researchers, startups and small businesses, would-be entrepreneurs and job creators will pack their bags, shutter their projects and move elsewhere. This will deny patients’ access to crucial treatments and further wreck our domestic manufacturing base — a crucial asset for our national security and working families.

To make matters worse, Harris also wants to expand anti-competitive and restrictive price controls implemented in the deceptively-named Inflation Reduction Act, for which Harris casted the deciding, tie-breaking vote for in the Senate. As we’ve already seen in the former Soviet Union and Venezuela, government-imposed price controls decimate innovation and deter investment in high-risk, long-term research essential for advancements and breakthroughs.

Only two years after becoming law, the drug price-fixing scheme has already provided a preview of the negative impact on seniors and others eagerly awaiting new lifesaving medicines. Seniors have been hit with rising costs while research and development investments have dropped, and critically important research has been halted.

This is in addition to a host of other harmful consequences for American consumers. 

Clinical trial starts already fell by 15 percent in 2023, and 36 research programs and 21 drugs have already been discontinued. 

An analysis from the University of Chicago finds things will get much worse, projecting that the IRA’s price controls will lead to 188 fewer small-molecule treatments, causing 116 million lives lost across the globe due to the missed opportunities to expand medical innovation. 

These are not just hypothetical statistics, they will be significant setbacks for patients seeking new therapies for cancer, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, mental health conditions and more.

In addition to stifling the development of new drugs, price-setting policies endanger the broader bio-economy, potentially eliminating up to 800,000 jobs and severely impacting small businesses that conduct most clinical trials. The stakes — higher prices, fewer lifesaving medicines, less innovation, and the loss of jobs and lives — are too high to ignore as lawmakers work to reduce drug costs. 

Doubling down on this failed policy is a recipe for disaster. Yet, that’s exactly what a Harris administration would do.

As if undermining IP protections and imposing price-fixing schemes aren’t enough, Harris has supported eliminating private health insurance and supports using Americans’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars to pay for illegal immigrants’ health care.

Rather than instituting national price controls, I support finding bipartisan solutions to reduce drug prices while preserving innovation — these priorities are not mutually exclusive. Last year, I worked across the aisle to advance commonsense measures that would drive down patient costs, improve transparency and increase consumer choice. However, Harris’ proposal would undermine both affordability and innovation. Price controls, above all, jeopardize access to new treatments for patients desperately in need.

It’s very telling that Harris’s first major policy proposal during her campaign was calling for even more government takeover of private industry and socialist-style price controls — on everything from food to housing to medicine. If she succeeds, her agenda would be an unmitigated disaster for all Americans, with costs no one can afford.

Thom Tillis is the ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property.