Last week marked the sixth annual Forbes Healthcare Summit in New York. This event continues to attract diverse and top-notch speakers, prompt meaningful conversations, and spur discussion about ideas that merit the attention of leaders across the healthcare industry who need to collaborate to effect meaningful, systemic change in the U.S. healthcare system.
Particularly noteworthy and impressive were:
Seth Sternberg, Founder and CEO of Honor: Sternberg described a fragmented home care market with more than 30,000 Mom and Pop operations and not one controlling more than half a percentage point of the market. His goal to use technology to “make these care professionals amazing,” recognizing how many are at lower rungs of the income ladder and struggling themselves, and scale home health to take care of our elderly is inspiring.
Peter Bach, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center: Bach continued in his established role of industry provocateur, repeating his idea from a New York Times piece published earlier this year that the government should purchase Gilead*, claiming the math would make sense for Gilead shareholders, Gilead management and Americans alike who are footing the bill for access to treatment for hepatitis C. No matter what your opinion on that particular proposal, he has a compelling argument about the need to think much more broadly about market-based rewards and to facilitate a wider array of awards for innovators.
John Maraganore, CEO of Alnylam: Maraganore and his company are getting close to commercialization of their first therapy after a dozen years of work. Before even launching their first drug, they have already committed not to make money from price increases but from continued innovation, and to hold price increases on marketed products to no more than the cost of inflation as his company grows.
Laurie Glimcher, MD, President and CEO of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: Glimcher made a pitch to tax pharma to provide funds to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), given the NIH’s unquestioned need for increased funding and the benefits that accrue to industry as the result of the NIH’s basic and translational research. Like others, she spoke with concern about the trend toward anti-intellectualism in this country that stymies our ability to celebrate science and those making real advances, and held up France as a country where scientists are revered.
George Yancopoulos, MD, PhD, CSO of Regeneron*: Dr. Yancopoulos made a passionate plea for us to celebrate science and ensure that “the geniuses among us” are funneled into research versus direct patient care, where their work can impact far more people. He expressed his grave disappointment that only eight innovator drugs were approved last year and urged industry to do better.
Ken Frazier, Chairman and CEO of Merck*: Statesmanlike as always, Frazier acknowledged, “The model that produces these drugs is a very fragile model. If the IP and pricing system don’t provide the level of reward that attracts capital, we won’t have the innovations we want, and if we don’t get the balance right, we won’t have innovation in the future.” Pfizer* Chairman and CEO Ian Read reiterated a supporting argument he has made many times in similar settings — that there is no evidence that the industry is obscenely profitable, based on P/E ratios, return on capital or other measures of profitability — and that the pharma industry is actually in the middle, making modest returns on the capital at risk.
Steve Forbes opened the conference expressing his strongly held view that there are huge opportunities for those who can break away from how things were done in the past and solve for these challenges. Finding new paradigms that incent and reward innovation takes on even more urgency in this country as Dana Farber’s Glimcher warned, “We can forget about having a healthcare system in the U.S. by 2040 if we don’t get ahead of Alzheimer’s.” Let’s hope the talent convened in this room, combined with the talent ecosystems they lead and the young talent we need to nurture and attract, is up to the task.
Kym White is Global Sector Chair, Health.
* Edelman client
Originally published at www.edelman.com on December 4, 2017.
