Springfield News-Leader: Patients deserve robust research innovation for cures

By Connie Farrow, Patients Come First Missouri Executive Director

There’s a lot of talk about the cost of prescription medicine, and rightly so. 

Patients who cannot afford their medicine may decide to go without or reduce dosing to stretch their dollars. These tactics can lead to more costly interventions, including hospitalization.

Affordability matters deeply to Missourians, but how we lower costs is as important as the goal itself. Proposals centered on government price-setting or so-called “price controls” may sound appealing, but we know from experience that blunt price controls undermine the very engine that delivers new cures for patients.

New medicines 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 develo

Read the full LTE in the Springfield News-Leader here.