Innovation

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On this page, you’ll find the Center’s analysis on how free-market policies can better balance the competing interests of medical innovation and competition. Here, you’ll find our research and commentary on such issues as patents, research and development spending, and reforms that will promote more robust competition.

May 20, 2024 Innovation, Issues

Congress faces a year-end deadline to extend its relaxed pandemic-era rules permitting greater use of telehealth by Medicare beneficiaries. If our lawmakers fail to step up, millions of seniors as well as privately insured patients could lose access to what has become an essential form of medical care. The expansion of telehealth is a perfect example of how cutting red tape can improve people’s lives. Congress should make these changes permanent and use the experience as a model to remove roadblocks to...

February 19, 2024 Innovation, Issues

Cancer is becoming more common. This year, the number of new cancer cases among Americans is projected to exceed 2 million for the first time ever, according to a paper published last month by the American Cancer Society. The disease is also afflicting people earlier in their lives. Cancer diagnosis rates for people under 50 rose nearly 13% since 2000. Colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death for men under 50 — and the second-leading cause for women. Statistics like these show just how hard...

October 31, 2023 Innovation

The Federal Trade Commission continues its assault on innovation and consumers’ wellbeing under the guise of protecting us from harms that are, all too often, merely speculative. In a recent example, the FTC commissioners assert that a merger of two closely connected companies poses theoretical harm to competitors. The FTC’s mission is to protect consumers by ensuring that markets are competitive, not to protect competitors. Presumably, the Commissioners imagine that the theoretical harm to competitors will somehow make consumers worse off,...

August 29, 2023 Innovation, Price and Costs

President Joe Biden celebrated a milestone today—but American patients have no reason to cheer. The White House announced the first 10 prescription drugs that, starting in 2026, will be subject to price controls authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act. Democrats laud these price controls, which they glibly dub "negotiations," as a way to lower drug costs for seniors on Medicare. But in the not-too-distant future, people of all ages may look back and rue this day—as the beginning of the end of...

August 16, 2023 Innovation, Issues

President Joe Biden just announced a new effort that he hopes will spur the development of better, more precise cancer surgery technologies. The program is part of his administration's "Cancer Moonshot," which aims to halve cancer death rates in the United States by 2047. Ironically, one of the biggest obstacles to achieving that goal might be Biden himself — or more specifically, his policies. The prescription drug price controls Biden signed into law as part of last year's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) have...

July 30, 2023 Innovation, Issues

The nonprofit group Patient Rights Advocate just published its fifth report exploring how hospitals are complying with federal price transparency requirements. About two-thirds are still flouting the rules. That's unacceptable. Noncompliant hospitals are preventing patients and payers from shopping around for high-value care — and inflating healthcare costs in the process. The price transparency regulations went into effect in January 2021. Hospitals are now required to publish the prices they have negotiated with each insurer for every service they provide. They must also display the cost of 300 "shoppable"...

June 27, 2023 Innovation, Issues

A new Senate bill takes aim at one of the chief drivers of the high out-of-pocket drug costs that many consumers are experiencing — middlemen known as "pharmacy benefit managers." Introduced in mid-June by a bipartisan group of senators including Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the Patients Before Middlemen Act — or PBM Act, for short — would shed some much-needed light on a part of the pharmaceutical market that has been in the shadows for too long. Few companies exert...

June 4, 2023 Innovation, Issues

Patients in several states could soon find it easier to access life-saving medical care, if state legislators and executive officials eliminate so-called certificate-of-need restrictions for new acute-care hospitals in rural areas. Certificate-of-need laws require health care providers to get a state government’s sign-off before building new facilities, expanding existing ones, or even purchasing new equipment. These laws are currently on the books in nearly three dozen states. It makes little sense to artificially restrict the supply of medical care when our nation...

May 22, 2023 Innovation, Issues

New research into COVID-19 has revealed some troubling findings. Even mild cases can lead to lasting heart complications. Comparing test data collected before and after a group of patients in their mid-30s contracted mild cases of COVID, researchers noticed an increase in arterial stiffness and cardiovascular inflammation. That means they may face "a widespread and long-lasting pathological process" that places them at elevated risk of cardiovascular issues. Heart disease is already America's leading cause of death, claiming roughly 700,000 lives per year. Add to that potentially increased risk...

March 21, 2023 Innovation, Issues

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has summoned Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel to Capitol Hill for a public chastising next week. The hearing will probe why the biotech firm would consider raising the price of its COVID-19 vaccine. Since the federal government played some role in the vaccine's development, Sen. Sanders argues, it shouldn't have the freedom to price its product at a price willing buyers will pay if that price strikes the Vermont senator as too high. We should expect nothing less from the...

March 6, 2023 Innovation, Issues

Experts from the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission , and the American Medical Association just released a paper urging Congress to peel back the Affordable Care Act's restrictions on creating and expanding physician-owned hospitals. Their analysis is correct. Such hospitals inject much-needed competition into the healthcare market. Consequently, repealing restrictions on them could help lower healthcare costs and expand access to healthcare. The 2010 Affordable Care Act bans physician-owned hospitals from expanding and prevents new ones from participating in Medicare or Medicaid. Proponents of this ban...

January 7, 2023 Innovation, Issues

Roughly 100 million Americans live in areas without enough primary care doctors. Nationwide, we’re short about 17,000 of them right now. By 2034, that number could jump to 48,000, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. To meet our country’s growing demand for care, we need to increase the supply of clinicians who can provide it. But that doesn’t mean just training more doctors. In fact, nurse practitioners and physician assistants could be delivering much more primary care but are...

January 6, 2023 Innovation, Issues

Government regulation is supposed to make products safer. But new research shows that, at least for medical devices, regulation can have the opposite effect. In a paper published this past November, UC San Diego economist Parker Rogers found that when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reduces regulation on a category of products, innovation and competition in that category increase, prices decrease, and safety actually improves. How could this be? Rogers hypothesized that firms “increas[e] their emphasis on product safety as deregulation exposes them to more...

October 29, 2022 Innovation, Issues

The silver lining of COVID-19 has been the dawn of the telehealth era — the greatest exercise in deregulation and individual empowerment in the health sector in years. In response to the arrival of the pandemic in 2020, Congress and executive branch officials waived a number of rules governing access to medical care, including restrictions on telehealth. As a result, millions of people were able to secure care from the comfort of their homes — many for the first time. Some of...

October 27, 2022 Innovation, Issues

October 29th marks the 40th anniversary of one of biotechnology’s most significant milestones — the approval by the FDA of human insulin synthesized in genetically engineered bacteria to treat diabetes. The first “biopharmaceutical,” or drug made with molecular genetic engineering techniques, to be approved, it launched a revolutionary era in drug development. Insulin is secreted in the pancreas and is essential to the metabolism of carbohydrates and fats. Insulin deficiency leads to the development of diabetes. Many diabetics require regular injections...

August 23, 2022 Innovation, Issues

The quickest way to get less of something is to regulate it. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the health sector, which suffers from a chronic shortage of physicians, particularly in primary care. And it’s about to get worse. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the United States is facing a shortfall of up to 48,000 primary care physicians by 2034, especially in rural and historically marginalized urban areas. Many states are turning a blind eye to this looming shortage...

June 15, 2022 Innovation, Issues

The House passed bipartisan legislation last week that could help reduce costs and ensure continued innovation for the future. While this legislation might not be covered as extensively as other issues, it nonetheless represents meaningful progress. This week, the Senate HELP Committee passed the Senate version, the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Landmark Advancements (FDASLA) Act, a reauthorization of Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), the Biosimilars User Fee Act (BsUFA), and the Generic Drug User Fee Amendments (GDUFA). These...

June 13, 2022 Innovation, Issues

Earlier this month, a group of 17 House Republicans released several ideas for modernizing the healthcare system, improving access to care, and lowering costs. One of the proposals — safeguarding expanded access to telehealth — could help achieve all three of those goals. Lawmakers would do well to relax permanently the telehealth restrictions that were temporarily waived during the pandemic. Those waivers have eliminated onerous barriers to virtual care. For example, Medicare beneficiaries no longer have to travel to a designated healthcare facility just to...

April 25, 2022 Innovation, Issues

Last week, both New York and Kansas granted nurse practitioners the freedom to practice independently, without the supervision of a physician. The Empire State and the Sunflower State are now the 25th and 26th states to roll back "scope-of-practice" restrictions on NPs. This trend is worth celebrating. The shortage of primary care doctors in the United States is already at crisis levels, particularly in rural areas. Empowering NPs, physician assistants, and pharmacists to treat people independently could expand the supply of health care virtually overnight — at...