#JPM23: What's re­al­ly dri­ving the cost of health­care and drugs in 2023?

Ex­ec­u­tive Ed­i­tor Drew Arm­strong spoke with PhRMA CEO Steve Ubl, Em­sa­naRx CEO Greg Bak­er and ICER Pres­i­dent Steve Pear­son about how the de­bate over drug costs has changed (or not) in the last decade, the shift­ing pay­er land­scape and why there seems to be so lit­tle move­ment on drug re­bates. This tran­script has been edit­ed for brevi­ty and clar­i­ty.

Drew Arm­strong:

So first of all, thank you to every­body for be­ing here and for our pan­el for be­ing here. In­cred­i­bly ex­cit­ed to have this dis­cus­sion on the cost of health­care and drugs and what’s dri­ving that. We’re here with Steve Ubl, the head of PhRMA. Thank you so much. Steve Pear­son from ICER, and Greg Bak­er from Em­sa­naRx. I want to start this con­ver­sa­tion with a lit­tle bit of a per­son­al rem­i­nis­cence. So about al­most 10 years ex­act­ly. I was a re­porter back in my pre­vi­ous job and I was cov­er­ing drug pric­ing and Gilead had just launched their he­pati­tis C drug and I was hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with an­oth­er Steve over at Ex­press Scripts and he made some com­ments es­sen­tial­ly about how they in­tend­ed to launch a price war over he­pati­tis C ther­a­pies.

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