As Election Day 2024 gets closer, STAT’s First Opinion asked executives from leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies to reflect on how their industry is being portrayed in the presidential campaign — and what their hopes are for a new presidential administration. You can also read Eli Lilly chief scientist Daniel M. Skovronsky on fallacies surrounding patents, drug discovery, and affordability, Sandoz CEO Richard Saynor on what the 2024 conversation is missing, and Bayer Pharmaceuticals COO Sebastian Guth on bad policy ideas.
It’s no surprise that the biopharmaceutical industry is once again facing negative political ads and policy criticism heading into the 2024 election. Issues like the cost of health care and prescription medicines are a priority for voters and candidates, as they should be. There is no doubt: The cost patients pay out-of-pocket for medicines must come down.
But some of the soundbite policy proposals that candidates bring up for short-term political impact could in practice have consequences that lead to less innovative medicines, significant job loss, and diminishment of America’s global leadership in the development of medicines. Perhaps most importantly, in the end they won’t make medicines more affordable for patients.
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