Letter to the Senate HELP Committee Following Their Hearing on Drug Pricing
February 8, 2024
Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP)
Dirksen Senate Office Building SD-428
50 Constitution Ave NE, Washington, DC 20002
Dear Members of the Senate HELP Committee,
I am writing to you on behalf of all current patients and those who will require innovative cures and treatments in the future. As a patient myself and founder of Survivors for Solutions, I am disheartened by the Senate HELP committee’s focus on attacking the developers of the medical innovation we rely on to survive.
While I had hoped this hearing would devolve from a televised cage match to an actual conversation about ways to ensure legislative policies ensure the most advanced medicines are available to patients, I was proven wrong. There were little to no discussions about meaningful policies that actually improve medical care and a considerable amount of time dedicated to having CEOs discuss their companies’ financials.
Nevertheless, this exercise was evidence that lawmakers continue to believe that it’s more popular in the public eye to keep targets on the drug industry rather than exploring ways to reimagine healthcare policies with a patient-centered focus. From reference pricing to more price controls, any policy that will give the government more power with drug prices is now up for consideration. The irony is that these policies seek to punish the innovative ecosystem that doesn’t just say they want to discover a cure or new treatment; they do it, and they’ve been doing it for decades. Now, all of that progress could slow down when patients like me who live with incurable diseases need medical discovery efforts to speed up.
Not to mention, the drug pricing policies you seek to import from our foreign adversaries are inhumane and void of empathy for patients like me who can’t afford to have only one or two treatment options available – as those patients in the UK, France, and so on. Their governments have made the ultimate sacrifice of treatment choice, personalized care plans, and rewarding risky R&D of advanced and lifesaving medical miracles. Why would our elected officials consider a policy that would remotely model this approach to healthcare? Testimony delivered during this hearing, if anything, served as your final warning about what price controls will do to America’s innovation ecosystem.
Unless policymakers like yourselves change how we look at medical discovery, I fear we will enter into a dark time where the discovery that saves lives is disincentivized rather than praised. If we truly want to transform our healthcare system to improve American lives, we should be doing everything we can to ensure the most advanced treatments are developed and accessible while cracking down on bad actors and policies that inhibit patients’ access.
I hope that you fully consider this and the needs of patients and your constituents above this wasteful hearing.
Sincerely,
John Czwartacki
Founder and Chairman of Survivors for Solutions