More wonderful news concerning Obamacare.

Shutting off the miracle-drug spigot

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right last week when she called her latest health-care-reform proposal a “his toric moment”: After decades of life-saving and cost-cutting scientific innovations from drug and medical-device companies, the government is about to step in and stifle the R&D that is our best hope for improving health outcomes.

Pelosi’s bill may cost pharmaceutical companies $150 billion over a decade — nearly double the amount they conceded when they cut a White House-approved deal with Sen. Max Baucus this summer.

The Pelosi bill is a prescription for fewer new life-saving drugs. By stifling innovation, it would hurt not only industry, but also all of us who’d benefit from new-drug development.

Democrats in Washington are out to cut health-care costs at the expense of the research-intensive (as opposed to generic) pharmaceutical industry. Yet drugs often improve the span and quality of life in a remarkably cost-effective way.

Innovative new drugs have helped many patients avoid costly hospitalization, for example. From 1980 to 2000, the number of days in the hospital per 100 people fell from 129.7 to 56.6, a drop of 56 percent — so that Americans avoided 206 million days of hospital care in 2000 alone, according to Medtap International, which provides health economics and outcomes-research services.

… Nor are the drug companies the only target. The Pelosi bill has $20 billion in “user fees” (read: taxes) on medical-device manufacturers. New devices such as artificial joints, pacemakers and insulin pumps are often developed by small startup companies — those least capable of paying these punitive up-front regulatory expenses. And the working Senate bill aims at $40 billion from the industry.

The tactics employed by the administration and Congress add up to sheer bullying — and while they’re battering the drug industry, patients are the ones ultimately getting beaten up.