Dr Gerard Anderson: Improving Access to Care Can Help Drive Costs Down

The public health community, the provider community, and the general public need to help the pharmaceutical industry increase access to services and put downward pressure on costs, said Gerard Anderson, PhD, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What impact could the recent spotlight from patients, lawmakers, and even the president, have on the price of pharmaceuticals?

I think what the pharmaceutical industry needs is some way to get the quantity up. Right now, they don’t have any mechanisms because they really can’t do very much.

I think the public health community, the provider community, and the general public, needs to do something to help the pharmaceutical industry to get their quantity up. They’re modeling their assumptions that only 10% to 15% of the population is going to get a particular drug and that is how they have generated their revenue estimates. So, if we can just make it that they get the same revenue, but with 60% to 80% of the people getting that same drug, we are all better off—but right now we can’t do it.

So, I think that the idea for me, is to improve access to care by helping the pharmaceutical industry increase the access to services.