Page 4 - Mid Valley Times 2-24-22 E-Edition

Serving the Readers of the Reedley Exponent, Dimuba Sentinel and Sanger Herald.
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Founded March 26, 1891, in a two-story building on the corner of 11th and F streets, by A.S. Jones
New drug price reforms would undo Hatch-Waxman Act's historic progress
Awards ceremonies, prep sports playoffs brighten up winter days
Fred Hall — Publisher
Jon Earnest — Editor
Dick Sheppard — Editor Emeritus
Thursday, February 24, 2022 | A4 | Mid Valley TiMes Editorial & Opinions
QUOTE
“Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.”
— Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
By Merrill Matthews
Guest columnist
Senate Democrats and White House officials are hastily piecing together a revised version of the Build Back Better Act, af- ter Sen. Joe Manchin an- nounced he couldn't sup- port the version passed by the House.
Early reports indicate that any updated bill will still allow Medicare to set drug prices, which pro- ponents claim will result in cheaper medicines for American patients.
They're mistaken. Ironically, price controls will reduce patients' ac- cess to low-cost generic medicines, at least in the long run. That's because the Build Back Better Act would undermine a land- mark Reagan-era law that has enabled thousands of generics to reach patients.
Passed in 1984, the Hatch-Waxman Act creat- ed a legal framework that allows generic drug mak- ers to manufacture and sell lower-cost versions of brand-name medicines. Any American who has ever saved money by pur- chasing a generic medica- tion has the law to thank.
Hatch-Waxman grant- ed new drugs a five-year exclusivity period, during which the company that invented the medicine has the market to itself. Generic companies can use that time to develop and test their versions of the drug. Once that time elapses, generic competi- tors can launch their own versions at a lower price.
The purpose of these reforms was twofold: To increase access to low- cost generic drugs while also encouraging compa- nies that invent original drugs to continue to in- vest in innovation. On both counts, the law has proven wildly successful.
Whereas generics ac- counted for less than 20 percent of prescriptions filled before Hatch-Wax- man, today they account for 90 percent. This has made it far easier for patients to afford their medicines, as generics typically cost 80-to-85 per-
cent less than brand-name drugs.
The Hatch-Waxman act also had a significant im- pact on drug innovation. In the time since, America has emerged as the undis- puted leader in new-drug development.
The bipartisan group of legislators who passed the law went to great lengths to strike a proper balance between promoting inno- vation and affordability. Now, though, the Demo- crats' drug-pricing pro- posal would destroy the law's system of incentives.
For there to be a thriv- ing generic drug market, there must first be a thriv- ing brand-name market. The United States has both, but not if the U.S. Senate adopts the House's misguided drug pricing provisions.
Democrats claim their proposal allows for the government to "negotiate" prices of targeted drugs with brand-name drug companies. But drug com- panies either agree to the government's price or lose nearly all revenue from the sale of a drug. Giv- en manufacturers won't know what the govern- ment's "negotiated" price will be until the drug is developed, many new, po- tentially life-saving drugs will never be explored.
For nearly four de- cades, Hatch-Waxman has fostered a competi- tive market for low-cost generic drugs, while helping medical science advance to new heights. Democrats' drug-pricing plan would undermine that success story.
Because there can be no inexpensive, generic version of a brand-name drug that's never invent- ed.
Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Inno- vation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @ MerrillMatthews.
It's been a dry (until Feb. 22) and cold winter here in the Central Valley, but these late February days provide some noteworthy events to follow.
This month marks commu- nity gala events in both Dinuba and Reedley, hosted by each cities' Chamber of Commerce. Dinuba's event was this past Friday, Feb. 18, and a number of past and present community leaders were honored for their contributions to making Dinu- ba the special city it is.
Congratulations to all the award winners, including Leg- acy Award winner Richard To- manjan from Don's Shoes. The iconic downtown business will close its doors for good the end of this month after 90 years of service as a commercial an- chor in the city's downtown re- gion. It's a sad day, but Don's Shoes lives up to the purpose of the Legacy Award.
Reedley's annual Chamber Gala for 2022 is this Saturday, Feb 26, and precious few tick- ets remain if the event already hasn't sold out. The Greater
Reedley Chamber of Com- merce will honor seven people and businesses at the Reedley Community Center, highlight- ed by Citizen of the Year Su- san Lusk. The chamber event returns to its traditional late February/late winter date after being an outdoor event in 2021 because of COVID-19.
•••
The other noteworthy
events in late February are playoff and postseason tour- nament action for winter prep sports teams. The basketball season took some unexpected turns for Mid Valley Times region teams this past week, with Dinuba's record-breaking season ended in stunning fash- ion by Sanger High in an eye- popping 30-point blowout. But just as suddenly, the Apaches' season came to an end two games shy of a section title when Frontier High from Ba- kersfield pulled off a road up- set on Feb. 22.
Amazingly, the lone basket- ball team still in contention for a section title as of Feb. 22 was
the Immanu-
el High girls,
who pulled off
road upsets of
Reedley High
and Rosamond
High (Mojave
area) to reach
the semifinals.
The Eagles (11-19 and seeded 14th out of 16 teams) played at South Bakersfield on Feb. 23, and win or lose have made a memorable postseason run for their families and fans.
The big sports setup for this weekend is in boys soc- cer, where Sanger and Reed- ley continue their rivalry in a most fitting and historic place – the section Division I cham- pionship match. The match is scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 25, at Tom Flores Stadi- um. Congratulations, and best of luck and good to both the Apaches and Pirates and may the best team win!
Jon Earnest is news-sports editor for The Times.
Jon Earnest
Why Big Tech wants you to think there's a patent crisis in the business world
By Chris Israel
Guest columnist
Big Tech has long felt free to help itself to the good ideas of smaller companies. It's bad enough that these giants fierce- ly contest the efforts of inven- tors to receive fair compensa- tion — a courtroom mismatch between startup firms with a good idea but little money on one side, versus behemoths valued into the trillion-plus dol- lars on the other.
Now, Big Tech is taking the process one step further by claiming to be the real victim here.
For years, Big Tech has been promoting the myth of "patent trolls." This army of creatures supposedly files bo- gus lawsuits by the truckload to grab cash settlements from tech giants.
Now, the latter have added the new wrinkle of claiming that the United States is facing a crisis of "bad patents" — in other words, that the U.S. has been issuing patents that are too vague, too conventional, or so poorly written that it's im- possible to know what inven- tion or technology the patent encompasses.
When tech giants get called out for stealing intellectual property, they've made the
same argument: they can't have committed theft because the smaller firms' patents were invalid in the first place.
"The claims of the Patent-in- Suit are invalid and unenforce- able," pronounced Google in a recent lawsuit with smaller firm VideoShare over video- streaming technology. Google huffed that VideoShare's patent was too abstract and "lacked novelty." Fortunately, the jury saw through the ruse, and the court ordered Google to pay $26 million for its infringement
Now comes the High Tech Inventors Alliance — an advo- cacy group formed by Google, Amazon, Cisco and the like — to allege that over a quarter of patents granted in the United States are invalid.
If true, that would be shock- ing. In fact, this claim is every bit as bogus and self-serving as the proposition that Big Tech is beset by patent trolls. The figure derives from a single, decade-old study that exam- ined just 980 patents issued from 2000 to 2010. To put that in perspective, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted about 2 million patents in that period.
The truth is that poor qual- ity applications rarely get through the system. And 25 percent of U.S. patents are not
"bad." The United States is ju- dicious in issuing patents. The USPTO grants patents in fewer than 35 percent of applications processed, one of the smallest percentages worldwide.
In addition, the number of patent lawsuits in the United States has remained steady for decades. If a "patent crisis" did exist, there would be far more than two disputes per 1,000 patents issued — a rate that has not budged for nearly a century.
Our largest competitors don't think the U.S. is awash with "bad" patents. China is responsible for between $200- $600 billion in theft of Ameri- can IP every year.
If Big Tech succeeds in its efforts to weaken intellectual property protection, the conse- quences will be dire, encourag- ing foreign theft and jeopardiz- ing America's global economic standing.
Our policymakers shouldn't fall for Big Tech's "patent cri- sis" hoax. There's too much at stake.
Chris Israel is the executive director of the U.S. Alliance of Startups and Inventors for Jobs and a former U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coor- dinator. This piece originally appeared in the International Business Times.
Fred Hall's column will return soon