For health-care “reform” to work, lobbyist and former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt said yesterday, Congress needs to include a bailout for drugmakers.
On Monday, speaking at a research facility of biotech giant Amgen, Gephardt suggested a pharma bailout as part of healthcare reform, judging by this article in the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. Here are the relevant article excerpts:
Translational research funding is key to wringing innovation and efficiency out of any health-care reform package, said former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt, but something along the lines of a stop-gap loan program could help hundreds of biopharmaceutical companies stay alive long enough to develop those innovations….
But many biotechs may not survive long enough to develop those drugs, executives said. One-third of the 360 publicly traded biotechs, for example, have less than six months cash on hand, according to San Francisco-based life sciences merchant bank Burrill & Co.
“It would be tragic if that many companies went by the wayside and the research was lost,” Gephardt said.
But after multibillion-dollar bailout packages for much of the financial services industry and two of the Big Three domestic automakers, there is little appetite for a biotech bailout. A stop-gap loan program or loss-carryforwards — essentially tax credits to be paid off after companies earn money from their innovations — could find a receptive audience in the nation’s capital, however, Gephardt said.
“I think people will listen to ideas like that,” he said.
