Nancy Pelosi's drug pricing bill threatens small biotech companies

Between the lines: Small biotechs often don't even have drugs on the market — they're still experimenting to find new treatments and cures, dependent on venture capital to fund their endeavors.

• If investors no longer have the promise of high profit margins, they may abandon the biotech industry, venture capitalists told STAT.
• "We could end up shooting ourselves in the foot," Andrew Lo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told STAT. "These efforts, while they stem from very reasonable and laudable motivations, they will have an unintended consequence of creating a chill on funding."

The other side: While progressive experts admit that the bill would reduce biotech investment, they disagree on the extent and whether the changes would be all negative.

What we're watching: It's looking increasingly unlikely that Pelosi's bill will become law before the 2020 election, but most of the leading Democratic presidential candidates are running on similar ideas.

Go deeper:

• How Democrats want to limit drug prices
• A drug pricing method that values the price of a life gets new attention
• How 2020 Democrats plan to take on pharma — alone