Transcript:

More than 45 million Americans suffer from the pain and disability of autoimmune diseases.

But there is hope.

There’s a lot of grit involved in drug discovery, drug development, navigating the clinical trial and the regulatory process. But while those lows can be very low, the highs of getting a drug to market and to patients can be amazingly high. What motivated me to get involved in making medicines was the realization that making the cure could touch far more lives than any doctor could see in his or her career. The draw to healthcare was always the patient—always the ability to invent new things using technology to help people feel better. And I think that’s really motivating to me and a lot of us who work in this field. It certainly is what gets me up every day.

Here is how you might already be helping innovators find new cures.

If you are saving for retirement, as millions of working Americans are, there’s a good chance that some of your savings are invested in biotechnology and maybe even indirectly in my company. So thank you. Our premiums make it possible for novel medicines to be both profitable and affordable. Only 8% of what we pay each month in insurance premiums goes toward novel branded medicines, creating the incentives for investment in work like ours. But insurance in America doesn’t always do what it promises. Some patients can’t afford their medicines because of unaffordably high out-of-pocket costs. Congress is talking about capping those costs, which is the right idea. We certainly aren’t inventing new medicines for anyone to be denied access to them.

Unfortunately, some people, including some members of Congress, think that the way to help patients afford treatment is by letting the government control the prices of novel medicines. The problem is that price controls drive investors away. That’s the case not only in biotechnology but in any industry. And price controls on novel medicines won’t even save America money because what’s special about medicines is that they go generic. Novel medicines are branded until their patents expire. After that, they drop in price and cost Americans very little. If we stop investing in the pursuit of cures for autoimmune disorders, we will be stuck having to manage these diseases with hospitals—and those costs only climb. Hospitals never go generic. And our insurance premiums, which largely go to pay for hospitals and seeing doctors, will continue to climb.

So let’s hope that Congress does not resort to price controls that turn investors away from research like ours, but instead caps out-of-pocket costs for patients. Insurance reform is the solution that will allow all of us—by investing, paying premiums, and doing science—to create new affordable medicines together.

So again, thank you. Thank you for your support, for helping to make breakthroughs by companies like ours possible. Thank you for helping us strive to bring new treatments to people who desperately need them. Thank you for being part of this massive team effort to build a healthier, happier, more productive future. And every time you check your retirement account or see that insurance deduction on your paycheck, we hope you don’t just see numbers, but the promise of scientific progress. We hope you’ll see the brighter, healthier future that you are helping to build.

So again, thank you.