Dr John Bennett Stresses the Importance of Transparency in Drug Pricing

CDPHP created the “Inside Look: A Call for Rx Transparency” website in order to educate consumers about drug costs, and motivate people to price drugs in a more rational fashion, said John Bennett, MD, FACC, FACP, president and CEO of CDPHP.

Transcript (modified)

Why was the Inside Look: A Call for Rx Transparency website created and how does it benefit consumers?

We think it’s very important at this point that consumers be educated around the real problems around drug costs. And the real problems are the price of the drugs. We have some very effective and exciting medications which can change people’s lives, and save their lives in many cases. But these drugs are useless if no one can afford them.

And so we feel that the first step is educating our consumers as to what those real issues are and we believe in transparency in drug pricing. We believe that people need to come clean, that the pharmaceutical industry, in particular, needs to come clean and show what their costs of production really are so that we can get to a much more rational pricing of drugs, as opposed to the pure profit-taking that we have today.