Cancer survival rates are on the rise, according to the American Cancer Society's latest annual report.
Seven in 10 patients now live five years or more after a cancer diagnosis.
Since 1991, reductions in smoking and improvements in disease management and earlier diagnosis have resulted in a 34% drop in the cancer death rate — the equivalent of 4.8 million fewer cancer deaths.
These astounding achievements did not happen by accident.
They're the result of decades of medical innovation. New drugs, better diagnostics, and more precise treatments have transformed cancer from a death sentence into a disease that is often treatable.
Yet policymakers in Washington are barreling ahead with policies that threaten to undermine the research ecosystem that made this progress possible.
Chief among them are aggressive prescription drug price controls.
As Rebecca Siegel, the lead author of the American Cancer Society report, recently remarked, today's survival gains are "largely the result of decades of cancer research that provided clinicians with the tools to treat the disease more effectively."
Researchers estimate that advances in cancer treatment prevented nearly 1.3 million deaths between 2000 and 2016. Progress in immunotherapy — treatments that harness the body's immune system to attack cancer cells — has yielded more than 30 approved drugs since 2010.
In 2025 alone, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued more than 50 approvals in oncology. At last count, the pharmaceutical research pipeline had over 1,600 cancer therapies and vaccines in active development.
At this rate, it's not unreasonable to imagine a future in which cancer becomes less deadly and more manageable with each passing year.
But that future is now at risk — not because medical science has failed but because federal policy may.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 empowered the federal government to dictate the prices of a growing list of prescription drugs dispensed through Medicare.
Government-mandated prices for the first 10 drugs, which are dispensed through Part D of the entitlement, took effect at the beginning of this year.
Among those drugs is Imbruvica, a breakthrough therapy used to treat blood cancers.
The federal government has already announced the next 15 drugs subject to price controls starting in 2027.
And this week, federal officials announced another batch of 15 drugs dispensed in clinics under Part B and through the Part D drug benefit to be hit by price controls in 2028.
Drug development is already a long, risky, and expensive endeavor.
Investors will balk at putting billions of dollars toward the next therapy for leukemia, breast cancer, or myeloma if there's a chance the government will cap potential returns through price controls.
Small-molecule drugs are especially vulnerable. The IRA threatens these drugs, which are chemically synthesized and typically taken as pills, with price controls just nine years after approval.
Biologics, by contrast, are not subject to price controls until 13 years after approval.
That disparity has made biologics relatively more attractive for investors. It should come as no surprise, then, that investment in small-molecule research has declined nearly 70% since the IRA became law.
That's devastating news for cancer patients desperate for effective therapies.
Small-molecule drugs are biologically well suited to fight cancer because they can enter cells and target the abnormalities that drive tumor growth.
They're also easier to tailor to specific genetic mutations.
Many of the precision treatments that have delivered gains against cancer in recent years are small-molecule drugs.
Cancer drugs often realize their full potential only years after initial approval, as researchers study them in earlier stages of disease or across additional tumor types.
By cutting short the economic runway for small-molecule therapies, the IRA discourages exactly this kind of follow-on research.
The upshot is that President Biden undermined his own Cancer Moonshot by signing the IRA into law.
Decades of innovation have given us powerful new tools for treating cancer -- and saved millions of lives. But the fight is far from over, as shown by the troubling uptick in colorectal cancer among younger Americans.
If we want continued progress against cancer, Congress must recognize that government price controls carry real human costs.
Defunding innovation today means fewer cures tomorrow.
Sally C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is "The World's Medicine Chest: How America Achieved Pharmaceutical Supremacy — and How to Keep It." Follow her on X @sallypipes. Read more of Sally Pipes Insider articles — Click Here Now.
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