Saul Anuzis

The most electrifying promise Joe Biden made when running for president was his pledge to “cure cancer.” This followed a laudable commitment that began with the national cancer “moonshot” initiative in 2016, when he was vice president.

And yet, in their Build Back Better Act, congressional Democrats have betrayed Biden’s promise. Embedded in this multi-trillion dollar package is a prescription drug price-fixing mechanism, whose effect will be to greatly reduce cancer research and thus hinder the discovery of new cancer treatments.

Oncology therapy is by far the largest segment in the pharma world. So great is the need for cancer therapy that sales are slated to amount to $224 billion by 2024. There couldn’t be a worse time to handicap cancer research. Roughly 40% of Americans will be diagnosed with some form of cancer over the course of their lives. And seniors are 11 times more likely to be diagnosed than younger patients — a fact which takes on more urgency since seniors are also the fastest-growing demographic cohort in the world.

The total number of people aged 80 and over will triple in the next three decades to almost 450 million worldwide. In the United States, older adults will outnumber children by 2035, with Americans over 65 numbering 77 million. Currently, one in eight Americans is age 65 or over, and the median age at the time of a cancer diagnosis is 68. Of all cancer diagnoses, 56% occur in the over-65 population, as do 70% of all cancer deaths.

Although cancer mortality has fallen by 5% in the under-65s, it has increased by 15% among seniors. So as an aging nation, America is bracing itself for many tens of millions of cancer diagnoses that will only be mitigated by vigorous research and development. Current trends hold out great hope. In recent years, death rates have fallen among Americans diagnosed with the most prevalent forms of cancer. Between 2014-18, mortality rates have dropped for 11 of the 19 most common cancers among males, and 14 of 20 in females.

Build Back Better’s price-fixing directives would, however, bring this progress to a screeching halt.

The breadth and diversity of research needed to accomplish a “cure for cancer” of the kind President Biden craves will require thousands of scientists in hundreds of laboratories working on innumerable experiments over decades. Since no one ever knows beforehand which experiment will be the one that unlocks the next breakthrough, policymakers must make sure that as many experiments as possible are funded and seen through to their conclusion.

And yet it is precisely this defining quality of America’s war on cancer — the aggregate volume of our cancer research — that Build Back Better would compromise. In an understandable desire to lower prescription drug costs, Congress wants to empower the federal government to set those prices below market rates, akin to countries with socialized medicine.

Those countries — the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and Japan — produce only fractions of the number of next-generation drugs that are developed in the United States. There are currently 3,876 immuno-oncology therapies in the global drug-development pipeline. One country alone — the United States — accounts for nearly half of all these therapies. By importing elements of socialized price-fixing policies from elsewhere, we will also import a notably slowed pace of innovation and hollow out our research and development networks.

To be clear, we absolutely need to make it easier for Americans to afford their medicines. Currently, roughly one in eight cancer patients faces a cost greater than $2,000 for their drugs. Nearly half choose not to take the medication at all, rather than paying the price.

But any reforms to make prescriptions more affordable must also incentivize the research that makes them possible in the first place. Embracing price controls will knock us off the path to controlling and curing cancer, and will cost millions of lives and jobs.

No one should doubt President Biden’s sincerity. But in the war on cancer, Build Back Better is a giant roadblock. For the sake of all Americans at risk of cancer — and particularly, most vulnerable seniors — lawmakers must undo the damage that they’ve just wrought.

Saul Anuzis is president of 60 Plus, the American Association of Senior Citizens.