In case you missed it, Katie Payne, senior vice president for strategic communications for the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA), discusses how the BIO International Convention happening this week in Boston, MA misses the critical opportunity to address the root cause of high prescription drug prices, which is Big Pharma’s abuse of the patent system to keep more affordable alternatives from entering the market, and ways the entire prescription drug supply chain can step up to ensure all Americans can afford their prescriptions in a new op-ed published in the Boston Globe.
Check out highlights from the piece below and read the full op-ed HERE.
Prescription Prices Should Be Addressed At BIO International Convention
Boston Globe
Katie Payne
June 7, 2023
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/07/opinion/prescriptions-pharmacy-benefit-managers-prices/
This week more than 14,000 business leaders in the life sciences are in Boston for the BIO International Convention — executives, marketers, and researchers representing companies ranging from biotech startups to big pharma giants.
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Today I work in a separate part of the prescription drug supply chain, as a leader at the trade association for America’s pharmacy benefit companies. Pharmacy benefit companies are hired by health plan sponsors, like employers, to secure savings on prescription drugs, most often by negotiating savings from drug companies.
It was with this purview that I perused the speaker list and session topics for this year’s conference at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Surely there would be a conversation about the elephant in the room: The fact that, for far too many Americans, the innovations drug companies create are out of reach due to cost. Aside from two sessions dedicated to the impact of Congress’s recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act on innovation, not one session at the largest pharma event of the year addresses how to tackle the prescription drug affordability crisis that policy makers in Washington, D.C., are seeking to solve.
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Yet despite the clear demand to address prescription affordability, it seems there are a hundred other topics to discuss as a pharmaceutical and biotech sector at this year’s meeting of the minds.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, as policy makers agonize over how to tackle out-of-control drug costs, there has been a concerted effort to distract lawmakers from real solutions that address the fundamental causes of high drug prices — and focus instead on misguided proposals that buy into what feels like a highly orchestrated and well-funded smoke-and-mirrors, shift-the-blame scheme. At the core of the affordability problems in the United States are the prices big drug companies decide to charge for their products — and the egregious patent abuse tactics many of these companies utilize to undermine more affordable options.
To avoid legislation that would rein in high prices and patent abuse, big pharma is shifting blame to pharmacy benefit companies whose primary role is to lower drug costs. And the legislation big pharma is pushing for under the guise of “drug pricing legislation” lets drug companies off the hook and would mean increased costs for patients.
Now imagine a convention where all of the stakeholders in the life sciences talked about ways to step up and make drugs more affordable for patients and their families — even for just one panel discussion. I’d share what pharmacy benefit companies are doing to advance a more affordable and sustainable future, how they’re evolving business models to tangibly address concerns raised around transparency, and how the pharmacy benefit industry has unified in support of policies that create cost-lowering competition in the prescription drug marketplace — opposing only those policies that drive costs up for patients and taxpayers or take away employers’ ability to choose how to design and pay for their employees’ pharmacy benefits. I’d also want to hear more about the laudable decision several drug companies recently took to lower list prices on a variety of insulin products — and ask more companies for similar pricing discretion across other therapeutic areas.
All companies that have an impact on drug pricing, including drug companies that set the initial price of drugs and profit more when prices are higher, should come to the table with what they’re doing to ensure Americans aren’t skipping doses because they need to decide between groceries and medication.
Maybe next year.
Katie Payne is senior vice president of strategic communications at the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association.
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Learn more about public policy solutions that would promote competition in the prescription drug market and effectively lower prices for patients HERE.
Learn more about the critical role of pharmacy benefit companies and how Big Pharma’s egregious practices are the root cause of high drug prices HERE.
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PCMA is the national association representing America’s pharmacy benefit companies. Pharmacy benefit companies are working every day to secure savings, enable better health outcomes, and support access to quality prescription drug coverage for more than 275 million patients. Learn more at www.pcmanet.org
