HS&M - December/January 2018

FOCUS ON THE SOCIAL
CONTRACT
BRENT SAUNDERS

Chairman, President and CEO Allergan

“I believe pharmaceutical companies have a social contract in America, to make sure we continue to invest money in R&D, to raise drug prices in a very responsible way, and make sure we can grow our business for our shareholders. And I believe all those things can live in harmony, and in the vast majority of the pharmaceutical industry they actually do.” That was my spontaneous answer to a question about our industry, thrown at me by Jim Cramer, when I appeared on his show Mad Money.

Shortly afterward, on vacation with my family, I found us engaged in a discussion about what “social contract” meant. I started thinking about industry’s commitment to finding equilibrium between the need to invest in innovation and pricing treatments so they are accessible and affordable. Then I shared the idea with my colleagues Alex Kelly, EVP Corporate Affairs and chief communications officer;

Bill Meury, EVP and chief commercial officer; and Bob Bailey, EVP and chief legal officer and corporate secretary. There was enough enthusiasm about what it meant that the concept just snowballed.

Like most of us, I think pharma doesn’t deserve the bad press it gets when one or two outliers make bad or greedy decisions. I

ROUNDTABLE

There is no hotter topic in healthcare than the overall costs incurred by all involved, especially the patients. In fact, it’s one of the most complex, confounding, and contentious issues on the national landscape today. And it involves healthcare companies, insurance providers, government agencies, advocacy groups…not to mention all of us consumers. As is often noted, healthcare currently represents about 18%

of U.S. GDP, projected by the CMS to rise to 20% by 2025. This is significantly more than any other industrialized country, and needs to be brought under control.

Obviously, in sales and marketing, we cannot directly impact all the influences on healthcare costs, but we can wrestle with some of them. We do this both as professionals and as citizens, especially out of concern for the investment in our personal health and that of our families. We face these issues every day because our companies suffer both the effects of rising costs, and the negative PR that attaches itself to our industry, often unfairly.

To tackle this Gordian knot of challenges, we have reached out to a wide variety of knowledgeable people across the industry for their wisdom.

Unlike our usual roundtable, which includes a list of questions that all panelists are invited to answer, we set down just the major one for this article: how can healthcare costs be reasonably handled, by all parties involved? Each of our contributors approaches this from a unique point of view, so we present here a wide range of solutions.

We hope this is informative and inspirational to you. It’s something we cannot ignore, and must engage with if we are to improve our effectiveness, profitability and image.