Terrific article in this week’s BioCentury, “Pricing Politics,” by one of our favorite reporters, Steve Usdin.
Here’s the opening paragraph:
Presidential candidates from both parties are tapping into public anger over prescription drug prices and responding by repeating old proposals, like controlling prices or lowering FDA approval standards, that won’t be enacted and probably wouldn’t work if they were put into practice.
Usdin writes about the “corrosive political environment” and “unrealistic prescriptions (aka: Bernie Sanders). He speaks of schadenfreude over our favorite “Pharma Bro” and how the Turing imbroglio has ignited the always-smoldering fire of public discontent over the way the pharmaceutical industry conducts its business.
How to manage this out-of-control Turingfreude? One way is for the innovative pharmaceutical industry to do a better job communicating the value message (I know, this is a recording) and, per Usdin, both PhRMA and BIO are preparing to ramp up their messaging efforts.
This is important beyond the rhetoric of a political season since many states have transparency initiatives that can only be successfully argued through the lens of relentless science and the potency of value.
