Arizona leaders need to defend growing bioscience industry

This column by Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry President and CEO Danny Seiden originally appeared in the Arizona Capitol Times.

More than 3,000 companies in Arizona have created over 40,000 jobs in the bioscience fields, which has led to a positive economic impact of nearly $44 billion. These are the types of good-paying jobs — many paying $20,000 higher than the private sector average — that attract the highly educated, productive workers that states clamor for. Arizona’s contribution to the bioscience sector has changed patients’ lives for the better and made our economy stronger. 

A new proposal from Washington, though, takes a page from Europe and could reverse the progress scientists and researchers here have achieved, leaving our medical treatments, therapies and the economy worse off.

Consider the example of one of Arizona’s shining stars, TGen, the Translational Genomics Research Institute. Created in 2002, TGen’s work in identifying rare diseases and advancing technologies for early cancer detection has laid the foundation for scientific discoveries that are directly affecting patients and creating positive health outcomes for all Americans.   

It’s an Arizona success story, made possible by heavy recruitment by state and federal government leaders, funding by the state, nonprofits, and private industry, and a pro-business, pro-innovation environment that fosters and encourages life-changing research. Over the past decade, dozens of smaller biotech startups in the state have made groundbreaking discoveries in oncology, diagnostics, respiratory health and regenerative medicines.  

All that success is at risk, though, because of a policy proposal called “Most Favored Nation (MFN),” which would introduce foreign price controls for prescription drugs.

It’s true that many medicines in foreign countries cost less than they do here in the United States. But that’s because foreign governments impose strict price controls — think 1970s gasoline markets for pharmaceuticals, complete with shortages and reduced access. 

Because of price controls, European countries and Canada typically do not have access to many of the specialty drugs that treat diseases like cancer or arthritis until many years after they are introduced in the U.S. In fact, Canadians have access only to roughly 11% of cancer medications while the U.S. has access to about 90% of those medications.  

The prescription drug ecosystem is a complicated one, to be sure, but imposing a policy like MFN would ultimately lead to less innovation, shortages in prescription medication supply, and much less investment in the science to create new cures and treatment options for patients. It’s a bad tradeoff.

Instead of imposing European-style policies like MFN here in the U.S., we should strongly encourage European countries to liberalize their markets so that the full spectrum of innovative medicines can be made more widely available and so that the research and development that is needed to bring groundbreaking medicines to the public does not fall squarely on the shoulders of the U.S. Through trade agreements, we can do for prescription drugs what we’ve done for the defense sector. 

The Arizona congressional delegation — House and Senate — should stand up for our bioscience sector and oppose any policy like MFN and instead support efforts that aim to address costs while preserving investment in the biotech industry. 

Arizona has come so far this century and seen advancements that were once unthinkable.  For our biotech industry to continue to grow in the future, we need our representatives in Washington to fight for it.  

Danny Seiden is president and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry.