Protecting Progress: Why Innovation Matters for Black Health

By Guy Anthony

Black Americans are more likely than Americans of other races to live with chronic conditions like HIV. They also disproportionately struggle to afford the often expensive treatments needed to manage those conditions.

So it's hardly surprising that Black voters care about politicians' proposals to bring down healthcare costs more than any other group.

Most of those proposals are well-intentioned. But they are not all equally beneficial. Recent efforts to impose price controls on prescription drugs threaten to harm the very patients they are meant to help.

Consider former President Biden's signature Inflation Reduction Act, which gave Medicare the power to set prices on brand-name medicines for chronic conditions like diabetes, autoimmune disease, or cancer -- all diseases that Black patients disproportionately struggle with.

These price controls promise short-term cost savings. But they threaten to erase the much larger savings that patients with chronic illness would otherwise see over their lifetimes. That's because price controls disincentivize companies from developing new medicines to compete against existing popular treatments for serious conditions.

Consider HIV. According to the CDC, more than 1.2 million people in the United States are living with HIV, and roughly 31,000 new infections still occur each year. In the 1980s, these diagnoses would have been a death sentence. Today, they represent a manageable chronic illness -- a direct result of decades of sustained research and investment in antiretroviral development, long-acting injectables, and prevention tools like PrEP.

HIV treatments are cheaper and more accessible now than ever. That's not because of government intervention, but because of the price wars that resulted as companies introduced competing therapies and battled for market share.

In fact, had the government prematurely intervened, those competing treatments might never have reached patients, who would still be stuck paying vastly higher prices.

That is precisely the risk our leaders are now taking. Many companies are already scaling back research because of the IRA's price controls. Since the law's passage in 2022, biotech firms have canceled at least 55 research programs.

That is especially dangerous for the Black community. Black patients have historically been overlooked by the research establishment. If companies are forced to scale back research, it is likely that treatments for smaller and more marginalized patient populations will face the greatest risks of being cut.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, continues to push for its so-called "Most Favored Nation" policy that would tie U.S. drug prices to the lower prices arbitrarily set by foreign governments.

The consequences could be severe. "Most Favored Nation" pricing would dramatically reduce companies' revenues on both new and existing medicines, decimating resources for future research and development. Researchers project that, if imposed on Medicare and Medicaid alone, such policies could cut research spending nearly in half, leading to over 200 fewer new medicines over the coming decade.

And there are also access risks. In countries that rely heavily on price controls, patients often face delayed and restricted access to drugs. Black communities in the United States already face barriers to consistent care and adherence to treatment. Importing foreign countries' price controls would inevitably have ripple effects across our healthcare system, worsening these disparities.

Health equity is not just about lowering today's price tag. It is also about protecting tomorrow's cures. Black communities deserve reforms that do both, not price controls that promise cost relief while sacrificing future breakthroughs.

Guy Anthony is the president and CEO of Black, Gifted & Whole. This article originally appeared in the Washington Blade.

Editor's Note: The views expressed are solely those of the author and are published to encourage discussion and debate on important public policy issues.