It’s starting to look like it would be a very bad idea to get sick, in any serious way, if the Republican tax plan becomes law. Ending cancer treatments for Medicare patients and partial Obamacare repeal aren’t the only ways the bill takes serious aim at health care. The tax bill could also cause problems for people with rare diseases:
Since 1983, a federal law has allowed fledgling companies to write off 50% of the cost of human clinical studies to develop drugs aimed at small markets of patients who wouldn’t otherwise have access to drugs specifically designed for their ailments. The law was designed to address crippling diseases afflicting a few thousand, or fewer, adults and children. [...]
The current House of Representatives version of the tax legislation would do away with the orphan-drug tax credit entirely. The Senate-passed bill would cut the credit by nearly half to 27.5% of research costs from the current 50%. The idea is to help offset the cost of cuts to business taxes, among other priorities. Over 10 years, the Senate bill would save $30 billion, while the House version would save $54 billion.
There may be good reasons to tweak how this tax credit works, to shift the benefit from huge pharmaceutical companies to smaller companies, among other things. But dozens of patient groups, including the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, say that ending or dramatically cutting the tax credit is bad for their patients.
If Republicans pass their tax plan, you’re just going to have to do your best to get a popular disease that isn’t cancer.