Not All Of Clinton's Policies Are Bad For Pharmaceuticals

Earlier this year pharmaceutical firms began to worry about the upcoming 2016 elections after Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton announced plans to regulate drug pricing further to ensure that healthcare costs don't skyrocket.

While that proposal was well received by consumers, drug companies, whose margins depend on their ability to obtain patents and set their prices to offset research costs, saw a rocky road ahead. Clintons remarks sent biotech stocks immediately lower as investors worried about what was to come in the future.

Increasing Alzheimer's Spending

However this week, Clinton announced plans to invest in Alzheimer's research, saying that finding a cure to the disease was an important goal for the healthcare community.

Clinton said she would propose a $2 billion per year investment into research and development of Alzheimer's treatments over the next ten years if she became President.

Alzheimer's Drugs In Focus

Her promise to spend more on finding a cure is intended to help more than 5 million Americans that have the disease, but pharmaceutical companies already working on Alzheimer's drugs are likely to benefit as well.

Companies like Eli Lilly and Co LLY and Biogen Inc. BIIB have already begun testing treatments with some success and firms like Roche Holding Ltd RHHBY and Johnson & Johnson JNJ have also stepped up their efforts to find a cure.

Bright Future For Alzheimer's Drugs

Alzheimer's drugs have always been a draw for investors as a company that finds a successful cure is likely to see a major increase in revenue. Analysts have predicted that an effective Alzheimer's treatment would bring in about $20 billion each year.

Mixed Results

So far, both Eli Lilly and Biogen have gotten furthest when it comes to developing a drug to treat the disease, but the clinical trials in both cases have been mixed.

While some say neither drug has the potential to become the cure the world is waiting for, others claim that further trials are needed to determine long-term effects and possible use cases.