House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at her weekly press conference, Oct. 28 (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

On­ly a pawn in their game: Or­phan drug tax cred­it on the chop­ping block again un­der Dem spend­ing bill

Buried about 1,600 pages in­to the ver­sion of the Build Back Bet­ter Act re­leased yes­ter­day af­ter­noon is a pro­nounced tweak to the or­phan drug tax cred­it that would sharply cur­tail which clin­i­cal test­ing ex­pens­es qual­i­fy for the cred­it.

The change comes amid a grow­ing furor over block­buster drugs rack­ing up or­phan in­di­ca­tion ap­provals, and reap­ing the ben­e­fits of the tax cred­it while al­so pulling in tens of bil­lions per year from oth­er in­di­ca­tions, like with Ab­b­Vie’s mega-block­buster Hu­mi­ra, which has won 7 or­phan in­di­ca­tions and still has no com­pe­ti­tion in the US, or Roche’s block­buster can­cer drug Avastin, which has 11 or­phan in­di­ca­tions.

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