Emulating European healthcare won’t win America the biotech race
by Rep. Ben Cline · The Washington TimesOPINION:
As Washington debates new ways to make the nation’s healthcare system work better for Americans, policymakers should keep one question in mind: What would happen if the U.S. stopped being the world’s most attractive place to discover and develop new medicines?
The answer is not theoretical. Europe already ran that experiment.
For decades, the United States has been the global leader in medical innovation. American researchers, universities, investors and life sciences companies have produced treatments that transformed once-fatal diseases into manageable conditions. They have given hope to patients battling cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and numerous other illnesses.
People were interested in these podcasts
That leadership did not happen by accident. It was the result of deliberate policy choices.
Strong intellectual property protections, a market that rewards scientific risk-taking, access to capital and a culture of innovation created an environment in which researchers and companies were willing to spend years and billions of dollars pursuing breakthroughs that they were not sure would succeed.
About 9 in 10 drug candidates that enter clinical trials never make it to approval. The few treatments that do reach patients must support an ecosystem built on extraordinary risk, long timelines and sustained investment.
That system has delivered enormous benefits: U.S. patients get new medicines for cancer and other serious diseases roughly three years earlier than patients in other wealthy countries. America’s life sciences industry supports more than 5 million jobs and has announced plans for more than $500 billion in manufacturing and infrastructure investment over the next decade.
Yet when policymakers weaken the incentives that support that system, investment does not simply disappear. It moves.
Advertisement Advertisement
Europe provides a cautionary tale. Before America became the clear global leader, Europe played a much larger role in drug discovery. In 1990, pharmaceutical research and development investment in Europe exceeded that of the United States.
Then, governments across the continent pursued increasingly restrictive pricing systems and cost containment policies.
The result was predictable: Investment shifted, and new medicines were increasingly launched first in America while patients abroad waited longer for access. Innovation did not stop; it migrated to markets that better rewarded it.
Today, a new competitor is determined to capitalize on that lesson.
China has identified biotechnology as a strategic industry critical to its economic and national security ambitions. Beijing is investing heavily in research, manufacturing capacity and domestic pharmaceutical companies.
Advertisement Advertisement
China now has one of the world’s fastest-growing medicine-development pipelines, with Chinese firms accounting for a rapidly rising share of global clinical development.
China’s clinical trial activity has also expanded dramatically over the past decade, and companies increasingly point to its speed, scale and lower development costs as competitive advantages.
That is no accident. It is a strategy, and Washington should not help it.
President Trump is right to reject that path. His “America First” approach recognizes that the United States cannot beat China by copying Europe’s price controls, weakening innovation or making America a less attractive place to invest.
Advertisement Advertisement
By focusing on U.S. manufacturing, requiring other countries to pay their fair share and making voluntary deals that lower costs without punishing discovery, the administration is pointing toward a better model.
Yet some policymakers appear eager to import the very policies that contributed to Europe’s decline.
Government price controls, weakened intellectual property protections, punitive taxes on innovation and regulatory uncertainty all send the same signal to investors and researchers: Take your capital, talent and ideas somewhere else.
The consequences would extend far beyond jobs and economic loss. If America becomes a less attractive place to innovate, competitors will gladly fill the vacuum. Patients will pay the highest price through fewer clinical trials, fewer discoveries and delayed progress against the diseases challenging millions of Americans.
Advertisement Advertisement
None of this means patients should accept high out-of-pocket costs or a frustrating healthcare system.
Affordability matters, but policymakers would be wise to focus on the parts of the system that drive costs without producing medicines — specifically middlemen such as insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers.
Direct-to-consumer drug programs, such as TrumpRx, a federal price-discount portal that connects patients directly to pharmaceutical manufacturers, have already demonstrated a promising model: delivering discounts without intermediaries and creating more transparent cash-pay options outside the traditional insurance system.
Expanding direct purchasing options, increasing competition and ensuring that savings flow to patients can lower costs without undermining the incentives that make breakthroughs possible.
Advertisement Advertisement
America’s challenge is not choosing between affordability and innovation; it is delivering both.
As China pursues global leadership in biotechnology, the U.S. must strengthen the policies that have made America the world’s innovation leader.
The goal should not be to make America look more like Europe. It should be to ensure that the next generation of medical breakthroughs is discovered, developed and delivered here.
America became the world’s leader in medicine because it chose policies that rewarded innovation. If America wants to remain the leader, it must make that choice again.
• Rep. Ben Cline represents Virginia’s 6th Congressional District. He is vice chair of the House Republican Study Committee and was recently endorsed by the committee’s executive board to lead the caucus in the 120th Congress.