Cancer and other chronic diseases will touch nearly all of us in some way.

As we continue to combat these terrible diseases, we must encourage our lawmakers to give researchers the tools they need to achieve that goal.

That is why I’m concerned about the Senate’s drug pricing bill that will serve as a dramatic step backwards, especially in the field of cancer research.

The bill will impose price controls on medications 9 or 13 years after their approval. But with cancer drugs, approval is usually just the first step of many.

That is because one medication used to treat a specific cancer usually ends up helping treat many cancers, after many years of research, study and trials.

The Senate drug bill would stop that in its tracks due to price controls, and progress on various cancer medications would end.

We need to lower drug prices, but we can’t do it by stopping our battle against chronic diseases like cancer.