President Trump and House Democrats may not agree on much, but both seem eager to slash the price of prescription drugs. But as Rob Atkinson writes for The Hill, price controls and other steps to reduce drug company revenues, like weakening intellectual property protection, would stifle knowledge generation and sharing, leaving future generations less access to effective new drugs than would otherwise be the case. Not only are drug company revenues strongly correlated with the amount of research and development (R&D) they invest in, but much of the R&D they fund spills over both to other firms and to the public domain, thereby helping to spur even more life-sciences innovation. In short, price controls will slow the pace of drug innovation and patients will pay the price for it in the long run.
