Tackling Rising Healthcare Costs Requires Less Talk And More Action
By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
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Last October when we asked industry thought leaders, “What would be hot for 2016” (see our December 2015 issue), drug pricing was one topic consistently mentioned. Probably not much of a surprise considering the mass media’s fascination with portraying former Turing CEO Martin Shkreli as being everything that’s bad with biopharma. But the reality is that controversy over drug pricing has been around for as long as there have been drugs. So too have been proposed solutions, such as the current ones seeking product-specific transparency regarding R&D and manufacturing costs as well as pricing. What has been lacking, however, is a concerted effort to bring key stakeholders together to discuss broader, systemwide solutions to address rising U.S. healthcare costs.
On Wednesday April 20, 2016 in Boston, Life Science Leader conducted its first closed-door roundtable of industry thought leaders interested in seeking solutions — not pointing fingers and placing blame — to this healthcare cost dilemma. One of the goals of this discussion was to produce an in-depth report to be published in a future issue of Life Science Leader. And although not every key healthcare industry stakeholder was represented at this initial gathering, we feel it was a first step toward a bold and valuable initiative.
Initial Rising Healthcare Cost Roundtable Participants
While we aren’t ready yet to reveal what was specifically discussed, we would like to share a list of initial roundtable participants.
Margaret Anderson is the executive director of FasterCures/The Center for Accelerating Medical Solutions, a Milken Institute center that works to speed up the timeline for new medicines to go from discovery to patients.
Troyen Brennan, M.D., is EVP and chief medical officer of CVS Health (NYSE: CVS). In this role, Brennan provides oversight for the development of CVS Health’s clinical and medical affairs and health care strategy, as well as the company’s CVS MinuteClinic and Accordant Health Care businesses.
Amitabh Chandra is a member of the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) Panel of Health Advisors, and is a research associate at the IZA Institute in Bonn, Germany and at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). At Harvard, professor Chandra teaches undergraduates in Harvard College, graduate students at the Kennedy School and Business School, and in Harvard's Executive Education programs.
Ron Cohen, M.D., is president, CEO, and founder of Acorda Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ACOR). In addition, Dr. Cohen is also the current chairman of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO).
Robert Easton, cochairman of BioNest, is a recognized thought leader in healthcare business consulting with more than 30 years of experience.
Jeremy Levin, DPhil, MB BChir, is the chairman of the board of directors and CEO for Ovid Therapeutics and former CEO of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (NYSE:TEVA).
David Meeker, M.D., is EVP and head of Sanofi Genzyme (NYSE: SNY), and a member of Sanofi’s executive committee and senior leadership team.
Elizabeth Page is a patient advocate and volunteer with the National MS Society. She currently chairs the society’s government relations committee in N.C.
George Scangos, Ph.D., is the CEO of Biogen (NASDAQ: BIIB) and a member of the company’s board of directors. He is also the 2016 chair of PhRMA.
Leslie Williams is the director, founder, president, and CEO for ImmusanT, a clinical drug discovery company focused on the development of innovative therapies for celiac disease.
Tackling Rising Healthcare Costs Requires More People And More True Leaders
We believe future iterations of these types of panel gatherings need to, again, include a diverse group, but we want that group to be even broader. We hope to include legislators, payers, hospital systems, and regulators. For the first panel we did reach out to the likes of Atul Gawande, Scott Gottlieb, and several executive members of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), but we honestly hadn’t considered engaging a legislator, such as Senator Patty Murray, or an executive of a hospital system. Perhaps next time we can get these additional folks involved. Though we welcome your suggestions for future participants, what is more critical than providing a list of names is helping us to connect with those key opinion leaders so we can get them involved. The success of this initial event was truly a team effort. However, we owe a big thanks to Ron Cohen. His tremendous leadership in not only pointing us in the right direction for key folks to engage, but helping us to connect proved critical in moving this initiative from concept to action. As a result, we recognized Dr. Cohen as the inaugural recipient of the Life Science Connect True Life Science Leader Award.
One thing is certain, if we want to move beyond the talk of tackling rising healthcare costs, it requires more true leaders like those who took part in our first roundtable. Stay tuned.