Thank goodness an executive of big pharma has finally indoctrinated the rest of us (including president elect Trump) on how to lower drug prices. His formula is really, really simple: you have to raise drug prices in order to lower them.

It was clear as mud, but it covered de groun'


Pfizer CEO Ian Read has an unusual solution for problem of high drug prices.

"We need to pay more for medicine so we can develop more good medicine, so we can drive, through competition, lower costs," Read said Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

This raise-prices-so-we-can-lower-prices concept was Read's response to a question about how the drug industry should react to President-elect Donald Trump's promise to "bring down drug prices." He told Time magazine in December, "I don't like what's happened with drug prices."

He doubled down on those statements telling the Washington Post that lower drug costs were going to be central to his plans for lowering health-care costs in the U.S. and overhaul the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

But what Trump and others don't get, Read said, is that good drugs cost a lot of money to make.

"The pill is not the point," he said. It's just a "delivery mechanism for knowledge" to cure a disease or sickness. The pill is the end point of a long process of research and development, and those things cost money.

Read remains optimistic about the incoming administration and noted Trump hasn't been briefed as much as he will about competition in the drug industry. "Trump is going to be someone that will make sure patients are OK."

Read's strategy is somewhat bold. Instead of acquiescing to Trump, he seems to be preparing for a bit of a fight over his company's pricing strategy.



Maybe the next time he's in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Read can explain to us why the same drug costs less in Canada than it does in the U.S. I'm sure his explanation will be just as simplistic as this one . . . He seems like a simpleton.


It's going to be an interesting 4 years.

Last edited by Rongone (1/18/2017 7:56 am)