State Funding of Stem Cell Research: A public health care benefit for all Wisconsin Citizen

Public Testimony: Joint Finance Committee/Biennium Budget
Cambridge, WI

By now we know that solving Wisconsin’s ever-growing health care costs is a multifaceted problem and will not be solved by any single solution. And while there are many comprehensive solutions being proposed, none of them go directly to the core issue---monolithic and predatory health care pharmaceutical pricing practices.

In 2005 my partner and I were vacationing in San Diego California. While reading the San Diego Tribune I just happened to read about California’s 3 billion dollar stem cell research program and about the many health care stakeholder groups who all were fighting for something they were calling a “public benefit.”

I continued to read and soon learned what they meant by the words, “public benefit.” They wanted to make sure that medical breakthroughs and medicines developed through stem cell research, and funded by their tax dollars, would be available and affordable to every citizen in California. Subsequently through referendum their State constitution along with revised intellectual property rights, now provide such health care safeguards for their tax payers and health consumers.

Wisconsin’s legislature should stop dragging its feet, step up to the plate, and do the right-thing for Wisconsin taxpayers and its health consumers.

This means that the state legislature should follow the lead of our great President, Barack Obama, and pass funding legislation NOW along with a policy platform that protects both its gold standard stem cell investment and its health consumers from outrageous and exorbitant cell-based drug prices down the road. NOW, not later, is the time to act.

When we weigh the billions and billions of dollars to be both made and saved through miracle cell-based cures of our worse most debilitating diseases and by such life enhancements as restored memory, increased mobility, regenerated body parts, and most of all, increased longevity, only then can we begin to appreciate the real scope and importance of the health care policy challenge that lies before you and begs for your attention.

Californians have learned their lessons well from our nation’s health care problems and have decided to go directly to the root of our health care pricing crisis. They are no longer going to pay twice for their health care: Once for the research and once again for the exorbitantly priced medications and therapies.

Public health care benefit safeguards can mean anything from requiring a successful grantee to return some fixed percentage of their profit back on their state funded billion-dollar stem cell-based drug discovery to the state’s designated patient health care fund to simply setting pricing thresholds on state health insurance costs for state funded cell-based medications.

The bottom line is that you and I as Wisconsin lawmakers and citizens can prove to ourselves and our grandchildren, and future generations, that we have learned our lesson from exorbitant health care pricing. We have learned not to give our money to people without first asking who they are, why they need it, and how they plan on using it. This new policy of asking the public-funded grantee to meet certain expectations and provide some return on our investment is better than writing a blank check and continuing with health care in Wisconsin as we now know it.

Now is the time for Wisconsin policy makers to decide whether the miracle cures promised will be made accessible and affordable to Wisconsin families with cell-based diseases.

Ultimately the answer to this question must be reflected in the language of the state’s financial and tax research innovation incentives and the stimulus funds now being proposed.

Asking the grantees to do the right thing after giving away the farm is like asking the fox to cough up the chickens after giving him the key to the hen house.

Without prompt action now by our Wisconsin state legislature Wisconsin citizens should not expect that cell-based therapies and drugs derived from this research will eventually benefit all of us as health consumers and taxpayers.