The selection of JD Vance as the Republican vice-presidential nominee has made many in the limited-government wing of the GOP squirm.
Consider his record on healthcare, where he’s signaled support for more state intervention. He justifies this approach by pointing to the struggles of ordinary Americans to afford healthcare.
But more government meddling isn’t the right prescription for America’s forgotten men and women. When the government micro-manages the healthcare market, ordinary people are among the first to suffer.
Take his attitude toward repealing and replacing Obamacare. Republicans tried to kill the Affordable Care Act as recently as 2017, just a few years before Vance entered the Senate.
Vance thought that effort was misguided. He mentioned regulations preventing insurers from charging sicker people higher premiums or refusing to cover those with pre-existing conditions.
“I don’t think there’s any effort to try to change them,” he said. “I think there is a recognition, though, that we spend a lot of money and we don’t get a whole lot out of our healthcare system relative to some of our peer countries.”
But the very mandates Vance admires are why health insurance has grown so expensive.
Premiums and deductibles have soared under the Affordable Care Act. In 2013, the year before the law took effect, the average monthly premium for an individual was $232. This year, the average premium for a benchmark plan is $477 — more than twice as much.
Meanwhile, the average deductible for a mid-level silver exchange plan has surged from $2,400 in 2014 to $5,200 in 2024.
Republicans should be looking to change course — not defending the policy that has led to a decade of surging costs.
Vance has also voiced support for government price controls on prescription drugs.
Such price caps have been a staple of the Democrats’ policy agenda for decades. And now they’re the law of the land. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act — which passed Congress without a single Republican vote — authorizes Medicare to cap the prices of a steadily increasing number of drugs, starting with 10 in 2026.
Price caps hurt patients in the long run by depriving drug companies of the revenue they need to underwrite investments in the next generation of therapies.
Price controls also discourage investors from funding pharmaceutical research and development. Why spend billions of dollars on research that may not succeed if the government can cap the potential return via price controls?
We’re already seeing the fallout. In response to the Inflation Reduction Act’s price controls, some pharmaceutical companies are shelving promising treatments for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s.
These aren’t isolated incidents but signs of a broader retreat from crucial research. One study estimates that thanks to the IRA, as many as 139 drugs won’t be developed over the next decade.
Each lost drug represents potential cures that never reach patients in need.
Vance has also expressed admiration for the price controls that other countries impose on prescription drugs. And he’d like to import those drugs into the United States. “We have to have leaders who look out for our citizens first,” he said.
Importing price-controlled drugs doesn’t disrupt the incentives for companies to invest in future drug development; it endangers public health. Counterfeit drugmakers produce $431 billion worth of fake medications annually, according to the World Health Organization. Fake medicines kill 1 million people yearly. Drug importation would put the sanctity of America’s pharmaceutical supply chain at risk — and risk stocking our pharmacies with substandard or even deadly medications.
Former president Donald Trump is pitching himself to voters as the antidote to the Biden administration’s inflationary policies. That will require ditching the interventionism his running mate has previously championed.
