1) How the UK Destroyed Its Drug Industry

You may have seen that Merck has announced that it will cancel a proposed $1.3 billion research center in London and terminate its pharmaceutical R&D projects in the U.K.

Why? Merck decided to pull out of Britain because of "the overall undervaluation of innovative medicines and vaccines by successive U.K. governments." Read: DRUG PRICE CONTROLS. This isn't the result of any sudden overnight change of heart by Merck.

According to David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly: "The U.K. has been on a long, slow glide path from a leader in biopharmaceuticals to really a laggard, and that's happened over the last 20 years through a number of policy mistakes."

Many of the European nations have suffered the same fate of being shut out in the manufacturing of new drugs.

Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute has done a terrific analysis: “the U.S. has swooped in to dominate the field.” She cites a Nature Reviews study that finds roughly 55% of the $276 billion of global pharmaceutical research and development investment in 2021 was by companies headquartered in the United States, compared with just 29% to Europe:

The lesson: drug price controls kill innovation not diseases.

Yet, the United States seems to be following the price control playbook that has resulted in the demise of Europe's pharmaceutical industry.

2) Conservative Leaders Rally Behind Smart Drug Reforms

If price controls are a dumb way to bring down drug costs, what WILL work?

Conservative leaders are rallying around our 501 (c)(4) partner org’s  Most Favored Patient reform agenda. This includes the very popular and workable plan to encourage direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical sales - thus cutting out middle man expenses.

Also popular is the idea of leveraging trade negotiations to get other countries - like the UK - to pay more for brand drugs.

Finally, FDA reforms to make it faster and cheaper to bring new drugs to market, will increase access to new wonder drugs AND lower prices.

On Friday, Most Favored Patient released a letter from dozens of prominent conservatives leaders to President Trump supporting this plan of action to lower drug prices:

3) Mississippi and Louisiana Now Have Better Reading Scores than All Blue States

We’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: Mississippi is now the number one state in the country for teaching low-income and minority kids to read.   And Louisiana is number two, followed by Florida. This story is massively underreported because it's embarrassing to the blue states that massively outspend them with nothing to show for it.

These are the 2024 demographic-weighted (on the basis of race and income) 4th grade reading score rankings from the left-leaning Urban Institute:

Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida now rank 1, 2, and 3 in the Urban Institute's fourth grade reading ranking despite low spending levels. That should be a wake up call. The WSJ has reported that the southern states have gotten back to good old-fashioned phonics for reading comprehension - and it works.

Illiteracy is a tragedy and the blue states are spending an enormous amount of money for failure.

4) There Goes the Sun

A little over a decade ago, California built a state-of-the-art $2.2 billion solar farm project in the Mojave Desert. Obama Administration loan guarantees paid for about 75% of its cost. If there is ANY place where solar should work, it would be here. It was heralded as THE green energy project of the future.

But that money is down the green energy drain with the news that the Ivanpah Solar Project is closing next year. It not only never produced its promised energy, but needed to rely on natural gas to keep operating. That sounds a lot like America writ large.

5) Photo of the Day

Three of our economic heroes together:

6) Meanwhile, Back in New York

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