Arizona Opinion: Not just a roadblock, but a dead end for patients — why the SMART Prices Act is anything but helpful

An elected official receiving praise is about as rare as snow in Tucson, but I feel we need to give credit where credit is due and praise our Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema for staying off of a terrible and dangerous piece of legislation. I’m proud that we have two elected officials who listen to the needs of patients when it comes to matters like these instead of playing partisan politics.

Our organization, ICAN, International Cancer Advocacy Network, recently joined several other patient and economic groups in signing onto a thank you letter to both Senators for not co-sponsoring the Strengthening Medicare and Reducing Taxpayer (SMART) Prices Act in the U.S. Senate. While the bill had a catchy title and attention-grabbing proposals, it would have damaging and long-lasting implications for patients, innovation, and creating cures.

There were many bad things in the bill, including policies that would kill incentives to create generic competition in the drug market; creating what would essentially be a one-size-fits-all national formulary for Medicare; and hurting prescription drug access in Medicare Part D. What really stood out to us among this potpourri of bad ideas was allowing prescription drugs and biologics to be eligible for government price setting (what they call “negotiations”) just five years after approval by the Food and Drug Administration. This will have a devastating impact on the drug discovery pipeline and it will negatively affect all patients — both those suffering now and those who will be diagnosed in the future. This is true for patients fighting cancer, heart disease, and every other condition where drugs can improve health or even cure a disease.

The Inflation Reduction Act has already done damage to innovation by allowing these negotiations to occur after just nine years for small molecule drugs (think of the drugs you take in pill form). Anyone in the cancer community knows that there have been tremendous strides made in treatment with small molecule drugs in the past decade. That has only been made possible by companies spending billions for research and clinical trials, and then navigating the extensive regulatory process that is necessary to get a drug approved to fight this awful disease. They do this because they are able to recoup the billions of dollars spent on development over time. Patient groups protested (and continue to protest) the nine year provision.

The SMART Prices Act reducing that time window to an unimaginable five years is disastrous for those of us waiting and hoping for cures. The five-year provision will flat-out disincentive any and all new treatments for cancer, heart disease Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, and the countless other diseases that need cures. This legislation wouldn’t just be a roadblock for the patient community. It would be a dead end.

That is why we are forever grateful to both of our Senators for staying away from co-sponsoring this bill. It takes wisdom to understand the long-term effects of policies. It takes fortitude to look past the shiny promises of legislation like the SMART Prices Act, and really dig into what a bill like this would do to Arizona patients and treatments. We are grateful that Senator Kelly and Senator Sinema had the wisdom and fortitude to support patients and protect the drug discovery pipeline.