CPA advocates for domestic manufacturing of essential generic drugs, personal protective equipment (PPE), and other critical health care products because it is vital for our country’s health security and national security.
COVID-19 showed that in a pandemic, the United States cannot depend on other countries for essential medicines and other medical supplies. Many countries banned exports of them to assure they had enough for their own people.
It is a national security imperative that our country is not dependent on unfriendly nations. At the height of the pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party threatened to withhold essential drugs from America. This threat reveals the inclination by some nations to use medicines as an economic and geopolitical weapon. We must have the capability to manufacture medicines and medical supplies necessary for the country’s public health and survival.
Today’s action is a meaningful step toward restoring America’s ability to produce critical pharmaceuticals and APIs.
A recent 60 Minutes segment gave the Cato Institute a platform to argue that America’s shipbuilding crisis proves protectionist industrial policy has failed. The opposite is true: the crisis is the product of four decades without an industrial policy.
America’s healthcare system cannot remain dependent on fragile and subsidized foreign supply chains for generic pharmaceuticals and other critical countermeasures that are fundamental to patient care.
Everyone agrees, in particular that reliance on China for key ingredients used to make medicines is risky; and everyone agrees that further up market – in advanced biotech – China is becoming an unmatched rival that could easily shrink America’s role in drug innovation.
Should Chinese organizations and individuals be allowed to donate to American colleges, and should their PhD students have access to scientific research grants? It’s not an easy question to answer.
It’s the second month in a row now that the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging has taken up the question of our woeful generics supply chain. This time, however, Ranking Member Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), started the hearing off by touching on a key topic in pharmaceuticals: the cost equation can no longer override the quality equation.
