As regular HOTLINE readers will recall, the widely cited Unleash Prosperity Now study on the economic value of speeding up FDA drug approval, estimates tens of trillions of dollars in benefits to the American economy. Getting life-saving treatments for everything from cancer to MS to Parkinson’s into the hands of patients two to three years sooner could save millions of lives and incentivize investors to put more dollars into finding cures. The study is already getting a lot of notice at the White House and HHS.

Ironically, a few days after our study was published, we saw this column by our friend Sally Pipes, a health care scholar at the Pacific Research Institute.

The article notes that the California Supreme Court will rule on a lawsuit in which Gilead Sciences is being sued by tens of thousands of users of its HIV treatment TDF. The drug was effective in treating HIV, and had warnings of side-effects, but the lawsuit alleges that Gilead acted negligently “for failing to bring a safer drug to market quicker.”

Pipes points out the novel legal theory behind this lawsuit if the plaintiffs win in court: “a company can be held liable not for what it made but for what it did not make quickly enough.”

That got us thinking. Since the biggest obstacle to bringing new lifesaving drugs to market are the federal regulators themselves, perhaps the Courts should be holding the FDA not the pharmaceutical companies liable for drug delays and for causing avoidable pain and suffering.

We’d gladly pay the legal bills for lawyers to make THIS argument in court.