House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's signature drug pricing bill would cost the U.S. economy $1 trillion every year for a decade and result in as many as 100 fewer drugs coming to the market over that time, the White House's Council of Economic Advisers said in a Dec. 3 blog post.
The council conducted an analysis of the effects of Ms. Pelosi's bill that refutes an earlier analysis conducted by the Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency that reviews congressional spending.
The CBO analysis estimated Ms. Pelosi's bill would save Medicare $345 billion over seven years and result in eight to 15 fewer drugs hitting the market, since drugmakers would be making less money and would have to cut research and development costs.
The Council of Economic Advisers said in its post that Ms. Pelosi's bill "may share the Trump Administration’s first goal of lowering prices, but the threat it poses to continued medical innovation will harm American patients in ways that far outweigh any benefits."
However, Gerard Anderson, PhD, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University, told CNBC Dec. 2 that drugmakers would "shoot themselves in the foot if they didn’t develop new drugs.They have to keep the pipeline going to have a market for selling anything."
A spokesperson for Ms. Pelosi told CNBC the White House has proven it cannot be trusted to provide "accurate numbers or honest analysis."
The new report comes as the Trump administration is urging Congress to pass legislation to lower healthcare costs by the end of the year.
Ms. Pelosi is waiting for a final review from CBO before the House votes on the bill.
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