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Prescription drugs: we’ve got to have them and the drug companies know it. Big Pharma has a habit of jacking up the prices on seemingly arbitrary whims, jeopardizing the health of patients who never know whether or not they’ll be able to afford their next prescription.
Despite ongoing public outcry, the drug companies seem to have little motivation to stabilize the market, to ensure supplies, or to keep prices consistent. This is not only a big problem for patients, but for health care providers and hospitals as well, who have to turn down patients or find alternatives when drugs are not available or are prohibitively expensive.
Fed up with these problems, a group of U.S. hospitals and health care systems is coming together to create their own generic drug manufacturing nonprofit.
Intermountain CEO Marc Harrison explains that health care systems and hospitals witness, one a daily basis, how shortages of essential general medications or egregious cost increases for those same drugs affect our patients.”
Said Dan Lilijenquist, Vice President for Enterprise Initiative at Intermountain, “We, in many instances, don’t trust the people who are supplying our facilities,” because their greed-driven price hikes harm patients.
The new drug company is an attempt to stabilize the supply and prices of drugs so that hospitals aren’t at the mercy of Big Pharma when it comes to providing care for their patients.
The group, which includes several large health care systems like SSM Health, Acension, and Trinity Health, also includes 450 hospitals and is led by Intermountain Healthcare. The collective also has the backing of the Department of Veteran Affairs, a major health care customer who provides for the health care needs of veterans.
In a press release, the group explained that their new nonprofit company will be an “FDA approved” drug manufacturer. The group will either manufacture its own drugs, or will sub-contract to other trusted manufacturers.
This game-changing idea is a fantastic example of businesses seeing a problem or gap in the market, and finding creative solutions to solve it.
