Glenna Martin, an elderly resident of Dallas, Texas, thinks that her husband died prematurely because he could not afford his prescription medication. Glenna Martin faces the same dilemma: pay for groceries, or pay for medicine?
Glenna is not alone. 42% of working-aged Texans skipped or stopped taking their medication due to high prices in 2017, according to AARP. Texans spend more money on their prescription drugs than residents of any other state, and Texans shell out the most out-of-pocket cash at the pharmacy. High drug prices often force patients to skip or forgo their treatment altogether, meaning many like Glenna’s husband risk their health because treatments remain unaffordable. Although Texas bears the brunt of America’s epidemic of high drug prices, the problem affects all Americans.
Nowadays, it’s rare to see Republicans and Democrats working together. In Congress, divisive rhetoric seems to paint Republicans and Democrats as mortal enemies. Yet, cooperation occurs more often than meets the eye. Some issues become so pressing that commonsense leaders must, and consistently do, work across the aisle to find solutions for the American people. Drug pricing is one of those pressing issues, and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) is one of those commonsense Senators.
Earlier this year, Senator Cornyn teamed up with Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) to address the problem of high prescription drug prices. They introduced a piece of legislation, the Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act, to ease the burden on working-class Americans who depend on prescription medication. This legislation would not only lower drug prices for all Americans but according to the Congressional Budget Office, it will also reduce the federal deficit by $1 billion dollars. The bipartisan push for Senator Cornyn’s bill proves that high drug prices affect Americans nationwide – north and south, Republican and Democrat.
Senator Cornyn knows the main culprit for America’s drug pricing woes: Big Pharma. Rather than abiding by the rules of a free and fair market with abundant competition establishing fair prices for medications, Big Pharma puts its thumb on the scale to give itself unfettered pricing power. One of Big Pharma’s most unfair and anticapitalist practices is their abuse of patent and regulation systems to keep competitors off the market. In effect, Big Pharma has become a de facto monopoly, leaving Texans to pay the price at the pharmacy.
Big Pharma abuses the patent system by deploying tactics like "product hopping" and "patent thicketing" as a way to prevent lower-cost generic and biosimilar drugs from entering the market and competing on price. "Product hopping" involves obtaining a new patent by slightly changing an existing drug's chemical composition and switching patients to a “newer” version of a drug at the time an older version is losing its monopoly and about to face competition. "Patent thicketing" occurs when biologic manufacturers flood the patent system with lawsuits, impeding competition and ultimately discouraging future innovation from generic manufacturers. This has kept drug prices unfairly high for Texans, yet Washington, DC has long turned a blind eye.
Anticompetitive tactics like these have wreaked havoc on consumers in Texas, hiking the prices working-class Texans pay for life-saving treatments. In a free market, companies succeed by producing the highest quality product at the lowest price, not by locking or suing the competition out. Senator Cornyn, who has long been a champion of promoting fair competition and capitalism, knows that Big Pharma fears free markets since a truly free market for prescription drugs would give their power and profits back to the people.
However, all is not lost. Senator Cornyn can be Texas' hero by supporting free-market legislation being considered as a part of the Senate’s end-of-year spending package. Those series of bills would end many of Big Pharma’s anti-competitive tactics and lower drug prices for Texans and all Americans. Senator Cornyn should protect Texans and all Americans from Big Pharma’s nefarious schemes and lower prices for life-saving prescription drugs nationwide. His choice will not go unnoticed.
Frank Corte, Jr. represented San Antonio in the Texas House from 1993-2011. He is a graduate of the Army War College.