A Pharmaceutical Industry Leader On The Issues
There’s an inherent problem with most news media coverage of the healthcare industry. The companies, the products, the processes and the issues surrounding them are so complex that it’s difficult to fully grasp an understanding of an industry in a two-minute TV news report or a 500-word newspaper story.
That’s why I have to give credit to USA Today. This week, the newspaper devoted more than an entire page to an interview with Abbott Laboratories CEO Miles White, who was speaking at a USA Today-sponsored forum at Michigan State University. In an interview, Miles gave his views and perspectives on a panorama of issues. It’s a piece well worth reading because Miles makes important points on, for example, why the differentials on what people in different countries pay for drugs should be treated as an international trade issue. Among some of the highlights:
Miles White on different pricing for pharmaceutical products around the world…
“In most countries around the world, when we seek licensure of our product, there’s negotiation with the government over the price of that drug. It’s a government-run health care plan in France, Germany, etc. And they’ll just impose a price decrease. We have not much to say about it.
“People will say to me, isn’t the U.S. consumer subsidizing the availability of drugs in the rest of the world? You know what? That’s true. The issue isn’t something a consumer can manage. It’s a trade issue that governments have to manage.
On the industry providing medicines to people in need…
“I’ve never sat in a meeting where we looked at a drug and somebody said, ‘But, gee, we can’t make money on it because it’s only for poor people.’ We happen to have one of the leading (anti-HIV) drugs in the States, and we provide it either free or below cost. And we developed heat-stable forms of it so (in poorer countries), it didn’t have to be refrigerated. We do have a social obligation to balance with our financial obligations.”
On the next major pharmaceutical challenges…
“I have a particular passion and focus on Alzheimer’s and diseases of dementia. There’s just so much scientifically that we don’t know, and we can know. And because so many of those patients are institutionalized for there are, if we can find ways to solve that, we not only (improve) quality of life for the patient, but we also prevent the medical system from being burdened by enormous cost as we age.”
On partisanship in Washington, D.C…
“I’m as disgusted as anybody with what I see as the inability of Washington to be collaborative. I think, ‘Why don’t you guys put down all of your Republican and Democratic shields and arms and uniforms and think about this on behalf of the American public, setting ideology aside here?” Because most of us are in the middle.”
