Government Should Enforce Law That Requires Drugs Created With Federal Monies To Be Sold at ‘Reasonable Price’

While members of Congress conduct a "bidding war" to see who can propose the largest Medicare prescription drug benefit, they are overlooking an existing but unenforced law that "holds the potential to make pharmaceuticals significantly more affordable for all Americans" without "spending another dime of taxpayer money," Peter Arno, a professor of epidemiology and social medicine at New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Michael Davis, a law professor at Cleveland State University, write in a Washington Post opinion piece. The law, the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, holds that any drug invented "wholly or in part" with the assistance of federal money has to be made available to consumers at a "reasonable price." If that drug is not made available as such, the act gives the government authority to license the drug to a third party that will make it available at a reasonable cost. But although Bayh-Dole was enacted over 20 years ago, the government "has never enforced it -- not even once," the authors write. They state that the government agencies responsible for its implementation "either do not understand the law or are reluctant to exercise their options," adding that the act "has never been publicly discussed by any administration." The federal government is the single largest investor in the pharmaceutical industry, spending $20 billion annually to promote health-related research and development; as of 1997, for example, 54 of 84 FDA-approved anti-cancer treatments received federal funding during development. While drug companies call the act an "anticompetitive price-control measure that ... will strangle new" research and development, the authors write that the act "is not about price control. It is about ensuring that pharmaceutical manufacturers live up to their bargain with the public when they accept the public's money" (Arno/Davis, Washington Post, 3/27).