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A major new
health-care crisis is threatening millions of Americans who live and work in rural
America. It would disproportionately affect seniors, the very young, and persons
suffering from chronic diseases who reside in our nation's farming communities
and towns. It is not a crisis driven by infection, epidemic, environmental factors,
or even personal lifestyle choices. Unless we act, it could ultimately degrade
the quality of life for every American, but it will be felt first, and perhaps
most profoundly, by those in rural communities. Eventually, it could cost hundreds
of billions of dollars, cause hundreds of millions of hours of lost time, and
extract an unknown toll in suffering and misery. The National Grange, this nation's
oldest general farm and rural public interest organization, strongly believes
that this it is a crisis that we must confront. The
crisis stems from proposals now before Congress to amend current law to deny full
patent protection to cutting-edge pharmaceutical products that are about to come
to market. Promoted as a way to "reduce" health-care costs, instead, these proposals
would disrupt both the availability of new medicines and the introduction of lower-cost
generic drugs. It is, furthermore, a blatant attempt to expropriate intellectual
property - property that has been created by years of high-risk and high-cost
research. Unless Congress acts to preserve current law, this counterproductive
policy would seriously undermine investment in research and development for the
life-saving medications, procedures, and cutting-edge biotechnology that will
be needed in the 21st century. And while all Americans would feel the pain and
discomfort from this loss of innovation, rural Americans would feel the pain (often
literally) the most. To
understand why denying full pharmaceutical patent protection threatens to create
a health care crisis for rural America, it is first necessary to understand that
there are basically three pathways by which medical innovation reaches patients.
Rural Americans, however, are at a distinct disadvantage along two of these three
pathways, when compared to urban and suburban citizens, because of their relative
geographic isolation. The
first pathway for medical innovation is through the knowledge and skills of trained
medical professionals, such as doctors. Today, rural communities suffer from chronic
shortages of nearly all types of medical professionals. Fewer trained medical
professionals who can deliver state-of-the-art medical care results in lower quality
of care. It also increases the cost and burden on the rural sick and infirm who
must travel farther to obtain quality care. The
second medical innovation pathway is through the use of state-of-the-art medical
equipment. Many of the most valuable pieces of medical equipment in modern treatment
facilities are expensive, immobile, require skilled technicians to operate, and
have high overhead costs. They are cost-effective investments only when extensively
used, which means they are often unavailable in rural America. The
third avenue for delivering state-of-the art medical care to patients is through
new medications and pharmacological products. Compared to the other two pathways,
medicines are relatively inexpensive, have low overhead and maintenance costs,
and are easy to transport directly to patients regardless of where they live.
Rural patients have access to the latest innovation in pharmaceutical technology
on the same day it is introduced to the rest of the country. Thus, for much of
rural America, quality medical care and medicine are basically one and the same.
It is, therefore, of grave concern to the National Grange that some members of
Congress are seriously considering changes to current law that could disrupt both
the availability of new medicines and the introduction of lower-cost generic drugs.
For almost two decades, the American consumer has benefited from the provisions
of the Hatch-Waxman Act, ground-breaking legislation that dramatically expanded
the generic drug market. Since its enactment in 1984, more than 8,000 generic
drug petitions have been filed with the FDA and generic drugs now account for
almost 50 percent of all pharmaceutical sales. The
1984 law also established a delicate and highly successful balance between the
patent rights of the innovator companies and the generic manufacturers' need to
bring products to market as quickly as possible. The result is that investment
in the research and development of new medicines has increased dramatically over
the past 18 years from just under $4 billion in the late 1980s to over $30 billion
today. This is a medical life-line for rural America - a life-line that cannot
and should not be compromised. In
agricultural terms, the harvest created by Hatch-Waxman has been enormous. Consumers
have benefited, the generic drug industry has prospered, and the innovator pharmaceutical
companies have had the right incentives to continue to develop new and more effective
medicines, medicines that are desperately needed to bring quality health care
to rural America. The National Grange believes that Congress should alleviate
this new medical crisis that is threatening rural America by promptly rejecting
short sighted proposals to amend current law to deny full patent protection to
new pharmaceuticals. Any attempt to amend the current Hatch-Waxman Act would upset
the successful pharmaceutical applecart that has delivered a bumper crop of positive
medical products to all Americans but especially to those living in rural America.
Kermit W. Richardson is the President of the National Grange. Founded in 1867,
today the National Grange represents over 200,000 individual members affiliated
with 3200 local, county and state Grange chapters located across rural America.
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