Columbia Missourian: Price control measures discourage innovators from finding cures for patients

By Connie Farrow, Patients Come First Missouri Executive Director

A friend called over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend to share her excitement about having shed more than 100 pounds with the help of a GLP-1 weight loss medicine.

She has struggled with obesity most of her life. It was the first time she could remember not feeling deprived or not dreading stepping on the scales after the holiday. Not only was she lighter, her recent bloodwork also showed tremendous improvement in her overall health.

My friend and I relived her numerous attempts to lose weight. There were countless fad diets, medically controlled food programs and even self-imposed starvation. Most brought a scale drop that was erased when old eating habits returned. The introduction of obesity drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound have been a game changer for people with chronic obesity.

These medicines, however, have been criticized by some for their price. Private insurance rarely covers them, and federal law bans Medicare from covering the drugs when used for weight loss, though they usually are covered when used to treat diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The American medical innovation system is the best in the world, and patients enjoy access to the most advanced treatments and therapies there are to offer. But the undeniable truth is that government price-setting measures stifle innovation and hope for patients with chronic illness and rare diseases who are waiting for a cure. They also threaten patient access to the best treatments in favor of alternatives that mean more money for the government and other big health care players, like insurers.

New drugs, including the one that’s helping my friend reach a healthy weight, are expensive to develop. Companies rely on profits from existing drugs to fund their development process. By lowering the expectation of revenue from the successful development of new medicines, critical investor dollars that also help pay for clinical studies could go elsewhere. The result will mean fewer dollars to spend on the research and development of new, cutting-edge medications.

Any stifling of development will have devastating consequences for patients and their doctors, who could be left with fewer viable options to choose from and worse health outcomes when they can least afford it.

It can also hurt our state’s economy. Missouri is fortunate to have a thriving biosciences industry that employs 48,628 workers across 3,327 establishments, according to a 2023 Biosciences Industry report by Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development and MERIC. This includes a number of biopharma companies involved in drug development.

Read the full op-ed in the Columbia Missourian here.