WASHINGTON D.C. — Independent Women’s Law Center (IWLC) has filed an amicus curiae brief in a constitutional challenge to the Biden-Harris plan to reduce life-saving innovation in the drug industry. In Bristol Myers Squibb v. Becerra, two pharmaceutical companies sued the Biden-Harris administration in New Jersey, arguing a confiscatory regime that requires drug companies to agree to sell at a loss or face enormous penalties violates the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, alongside other constitutional provisions. The district court wrongly believed that the pharmaceutical companies could simply not participate in Medicare to avoid the losses, but losing access to the entire Medicare market would devastate their business. The companies are pressing their case on appeal to the Third Circuit. IWLC weighed in on the side of the companies.
May Mailman, Independent Women’s Law Center director, said, “The Biden-Harris administration’s price-fixing strips companies of their products and threatens our nation’s access to life-saving drugs and innovation. When government interference prohibits innovative drugs from reaching the market, women – as primary caretakers of children, seniors, and the disabled – shoulder the sad realities of living without life-giving treatments.”
The price-fixing regime, passed on a partisan basis in 2022, is purportedly aimed at reducing drug prices but does so by circumventing the constitutional mandate for paying fair market value for property the government takes. Essentially, the government is forcing manufacturers to transfer their leading medicines at steep discounts, allowing the government to obtain medicines without paying fair market value, in violation of the Fifth Amendment. If the manufacturers say no, they are saddled with an excise tax amounting to nothing less than extortion. The reality is this price-fixing scheme deceives the public of its true intent: government takeover of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry.
Bristol Myers Squibb is one of several lawsuits playing out across the country, challenging the Biden-Harris socialization of medicine. IWF promotes access to free markets and supports policies that expand liberty and limit the reach of government. Coercion is not consent. The Biden-Harris administration has created an unconstitutional program, the implications of which are grave and far-reaching.
IWLC’s brief can be found here.
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Independent Women’s Law Center advocates for equal opportunity, individual liberty, and respect for the American constitutional order.