Blindly importing European pricing approaches could pose real risks to future innovation and patient access.
Adopting European-style drug pricing in the U.S. could have trade-offs. We don’t have to go that route.
A bout 72 percent of American adults are overweight or obese, and roughly 12 percent have Type 2 diabetes. Both conditions substantially increase people’s risk of developing cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other life-threatening ailments.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, only half of European adults are overweight or obese, and just 7 percent have type 2 diabetes.
Yet when Americans do develop cancer and other similar conditions, they tend to survive longer than Europeans with the same disease — despite often being in worse underlying health.
That’s no accident. The improved survival odds are largely because American patients can access vastly more medicines than Europeans — and they gain that access years earlier. As a physician and former surgeon general, I’ve seen how these cutting-edge therapies have transformed entire fields of medicine, saving and improving the lives of millions of Americans battling cancer and other serious diseases.
That’s why recent discussions about adopting European-style approaches to drug pricing deserve careful scrutiny. For decades, strict price controls in Europe have coincided with a gradual contraction of the continent’s biotech sector and more limited patient access to new medicines. Policymakers must approach any similar policy shift here clear-eyed about the potential trade-offs for access and innovation.
Consider how patients in the United Kingdom have access to only about half of all new medicines launched anywhere in the world in recent years. German patients can only access about 60 percent. Patients in Denmark can access a dismal 21 percent. Americans, meanwhile, have access to 85 percent.
That lack of timely access comes at a steep cost. Delays in treatment are associated with roughly 600,000 avoidable deaths across Europe each year.
These figures underscore why price controls are not a simple or complete answer. Drug development remains expensive, time-consuming, and risky. Companies take those risks because successful medicines can generate returns that recoup development costs, reward investors, and fund further research. Policies that sharply compress those returns can make it harder to justify the investment. Analyses suggest that pegging U.S. prices tightly to lower European levels could reduce R&D spending substantially.
Ultimately, that could leave patients with fewer new treatments, particularly those with chronic or rare diseases for which therapeutic options are already limited.
America’s health-care system is far from perfect. Too many people struggle with out-of-control costs and cannot easily afford the wide range of care available here. That frustration is legitimate and demands serious solutions.
But blindly importing European pricing approaches could pose real risks to future innovation and patient access.
Alternative — and better — pathways forward exist. We can strengthen competition among manufacturers, accelerate regulatory pathways for generics and biosimilars, increase transparency around pricing and rebates, and — most importantly — reform the health insurance system so that coverage is broader, more predictable, and better aligned with patients’ real out-of-pocket burdens.
Such steps would help more Americans obtain the medicines and care they need in practice, not just in theory, while preserving the incentives that have made the United States a global leader in medical breakthroughs.
We shouldn’t forget what makes America exceptional — or the responsibility to build on that abundance in ways that expand access without dimming the pipeline of future cures.