week 5 policy event

Policy Event Week 5

Name, Sponsor, Link to the Event 

ü  Harvard Chan School and independent news media

ü  https://theforum.sph.harvard.edu/events/u-s-drug-prices/

Place, Date, Length of the Event

ü    Leadership Studio at the Harvard T. H Chan School of Public Health

ü    September 26th, 2018

ü    One hour four minutes

Names of Participants and their Titles

ü    “Caroline Humer- correspondent for Reuters. Moderator of the event”.

ü    “Aaron Kesselheim- associate professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and director of the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law”.

ü    “Richard Frank- Professor of Health Economics in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School”.

ü    “Steven Pearson- president of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review”.

ü    â€œLeemore Dafny- Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School”.

Brief Summary of the Topic Discussed

            The event was meant to discuss why US drugs are so high as compared to other high-income countries. The event was meant to create insights for policymakers on ways of addressing the pressing health care issues in the US. The forum discussed ways that health care institutions, medical schools, and the government can collaborate to improve health care systems.

My Analysis of the Health Policy Issue and its Implications for Health Care

            The US government spends most of its per capita income on drugs but the drugs are still expensive due to the lack of proper policies on drug prices (Kliff, 2018). The high prices of drugs affect the quality of health care, patient experience, and health care outcomes. Some patients are unable to afford drugs and sometimes they skip their prescriptions or take less than the recommended dosage (Hamm, 2019). Lack of proper policies to regulate the prices of drugs increases the regulatory burden resulting in the delay of getting drugs to the market. The high costs of drugs increase morbidity and mortality rates in the US (Jenkins, 2019). Access to affordable health care should be made a fundamental right for the citizens in the US.

References

Hamm, N. (2019). How high drug prices affect patients. Managed Healthcare Executive. https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/how-high-drug-prices-affect-patients

Jenkins, J. A. (2019). Soaring drug prices affect nearly every American. https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/advocacy/info-2019/jenkins-soaring-drug-prices.html

Kliff, S. (2018). The true story of America’s sky-high prescription drug prices. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/11/30/12945756/prescription-drug-prices-explained

The Forum, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (2018). U.S. Drug Prices Why Are They So High? https://theforum.sph.harvard.edu/events/u-s-drug-prices/