U.S. government may have what it needs to force down rising Rx drug prices

Political leaders have said (and promised) much about the need to address rising prescription drug costs. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, thinks government can effectively lower costs by exercising the patent rights it already holds.

When the federal government pays for medical research that leads to a patented invention, the government receives a license to that intellectual property known as “march-in rights.”

March-in rights give government the ability to ensure medicines are readily available to the public. However, drug prices are rising faster than inflation, and the government has yet to use this authority, Doggett told NPR.

“I believe that when taxpayers finance research that produces a pharmaceutical, they have an interest in being able to afford that pharmaceutical, and that’s not happening now,” he said.

Last year 50 members of Congress asked the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use the march-in authority to lower the cost of a prostate cancer drug. It was sold for $88 a pill in the U.S. and a generic version was sold in Canada for $3 a pill. The NIH declined to use its authority.

Doggett hopes President Trump will exercise this authority to lower drug prices and force pharmaceutical companies to start manufacturing drugs at a lower cost.

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