There is a deeply flawed perception that the drug pricing proposals in the House-passed Build Back Better Act (BBBA) are more modest and less threatening to medical innovation than those of the draconian H.R. 3 proposal. In a new insight, AAF President Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Director of Health Care Policy Christopher Holt provide a comprehensive summary of the BBBA’s key drug policy provisions and examine their potential impacts. They find that the BBBA’s drug policies would dramatically curtail future innovation and imperil the economic benefits the United States derives from the biopharmaceutical sector.

Key points

• The BBBA would establish an explicit government price-setting regime for pharmaceuticals, reaching into all corners of the U.S. health sector, both public and private;
• The BBBA proposals would harm consumers through reduced innovation and higher launch prices for drugs and therapies;
• The BBBA would harm and endanger the expansive economic activity generated by the biopharmaceutical industry in the United States;
• There are better ways to lower drug prices than the BBBA.

Read the analysis