The Biden Administration’s Price Controls Negate the Cancer Moonshot Program

President Biden reignited the Cancer Moonshot program in February 2022, announcing a national goal of cutting the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years. This is a noble and important goal that Americans can get behind. Medical innovators will be essential to the fight against cancer over the next 25 years.

One might think that the Biden Administration would be doing everything it could to support the fight against cancer, but its actions have been contradictory.

The Cancer Moonshot provides billions of dollars of funding for cancer R&D. However, the Administration’s proposed price controls reduce cancer R&D by so much that any funding is negated. Economists from the University of Chicago explain this contradiction, “the reduction in total R&D spending from proposed price controls is more than 9.4 times as large as the increase from the proposed budgetary expansion.”

Their research supports the belief that price controls are bad for American patients and bad for American scientists, doctors, and medical innovators. Cancer research is a large part of the life science industry. Cancer is the most active drug class, with almost 50 percent of phase I – III drugs in the FDA pipeline being new cancer treatments in 2021.

Medical innovators prioritize cancer treatments because they understand their importance and the potential impact of the treatments on the American people. The Biden administration should bolster, rather than hinder the American life science industry. Price controls reduce R&D spending and thus reduce the ability of medical innovators to produce potentially lifesaving cures.

Read the full study here.