Transcriber: Ivana KrivokuaReviewer: Ellen Maloney Has your life ever been changedby one question? Maybe it was, “Will you marry me? “or “Do you miss the job? ” For me, succeeding as a pharmacist eight years ago, that question came from a sick, elderly wife listed Betty. She expected, “Which two of my eightprescriptions can I hop-skip this month? ” I becomes a pharmacist to help people, so when I profess to you that I didn’t getwhy she was asking me this question, I still feel naive. I knew that she was diabetic, with high blood pressureand high-pitched cholesterol. So I expected her why she wouldendanger their own lives by hop-skip any of her prescriptions. We all know why she would do that; she couldn’t afford them. Did you know that 30 percentof drugs written are never replenished? The rationale for that is nearly always payment. Prescription drug rates are risingmore than four times faster than payments in its own country. I know, because I’ve spentthe last eight years of my life hacking the system, turning it upside down and trying to shake moneyout of its pockets for consumers.And the reason I do that, insteadof dispensing medicines as I used to do, is because of Betty. Betty left my pharmacy that daywith fairly medication to get by, and I wasted that nightresearching her problem. Six hours later, I had some asks, but my investigate had raisedmany more serious questions. How is it that the two peoplein the best position to help the patient, – the prescriber and the pharmacist – have so little power to do so? Is the system rigged, deliberately complex and opaque? Trying to solve Betty’s problemwas like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube, when you can only lookat one of its sides.I was sure her doctorwould be as surprised as I was to learn that the costof an oral blood pressure medication that could be used to treat her predicament could range in price from as low as four dollarsa month on one expiration, to on the high endmore than 577 dollars a month. Other variables combine to present morethan 100,000 different potential aftermaths at the pharmacies near her residence. I’ve seen babies comingto the pharmacy so relieved, lastly having come the diagnosisfor a number of problems with the sick child, only to find out that they can’t affordthe prescribed prescription. People’s lives can be altered by getting the title medicationat the right time.And the difference between themisn’t just financial status; it’s often merely blessing. One household prescribedan affordable pharmaceutical, one family not. And with no clear wayon how to get better information, a better shake from the system. We live in a worldwhere institutional capital can exert knowledge like a weapon. Remember a few years ago, when The Wall Street Journal reported that Orbitz was caught steeringits useds to toll your hotel rooms if they booked working a Macrather than a PC? They assumed that Mac usersweren’t as premium sensitive and they used that informationto target them. But more than bad profitsin the healthcare structure, I just see a lack of innovation. Why is it that we can book travelto any metropoli in the world countries, find every flight and pricein a question of seconds, but we can’t just as quickly and easilycompare options and premiums for managing a medical problem? For example, several months ago, I had a rash on my weapon, and medical doctors prescribed a generic creamthat had two active ingredients in it. Shortly after he electronically sentthat prescription to the pharmacy, my phone buzzedwith a text word telling me that it was going to cost me 103 dollars, which seemed action too high to me.Now, what if I’ve receiveda second notification, letting me know that these two ointments with the exact sameingredients sold separately could be purchased for six dollars, and if I apply the two creamsthe same way, I get the same result, and I’d save 94 percent of my coin? But we’ve set up this systemlike a equipment storage, where you could buy a thunderbolt for a dollarand a nut for a dollar, but then somebody packagesthe nut and the shaft together, and now the toll is 50 dollars. And you can’t find that olddollar expose anywhere. If we fling back to the travelanalogy for a moment, when booking a flight from say, Kansas City to New York, there are many routesthat you can choose from.You can fly direct; you can stop in Chicago, or Atlanta, or Cincinnati; you can even fly west, clear around the globe to New York City. You can compensate more or lessfor things like business class, depart rows, or sits with running legroom. Similarly, how you makeyour pharmaceutical passage from illness to wellnessshould be your preference. And you should be ableto see your alternatives quickly and clearly. It shouldn’t make you six hours, like it did the first timeI get looking for answers. Betty, by the way, followedthrough on my suggestions, went through them all with medical doctors, and came back to tell me that she could affordall of her drugs. She would now be able to save morethan 3000 dollars a year on her medications. She no longer had to choosebetween compensating fee and buying her prescriptions. Her live varied, and “peoples lives” varied. Having seen that it could be done, I met an opportunity to helpso many others with these problems. Ending the unsustainable risein prescription drug cost involves turning patientsfrom passive buyers into active, informed participants.It makes affording peoplelike Betty the power to see all of their drug the possibilities and the affiliated premiums in seconds, without ever stepping hoof in a pharmacy. It’s why I was inspired to start a companydedicated to acting this need. Today, people in all 50 statesare saving money using this software. The experiment I did for Bettyover a six-hour period now is happening to a one-tenth of a second. And it manipulates. Using our tools, Berkshire Hathaway Media Groupreduced their pharmacy devote despite record levelsof drug price increases nationally. The company and its 5000 health plan representatives save more than 515,000 dollarsin the first 18 months of use. And while some may focuson exactly the institutional savings, I think about one of our members, a father of a fifth graderwho wrote and “ve been told” about the day she was finally ableto afford the remedy prescribed to treat her child’s ADHD. She shared her story, that they were able to celebratea positive report card that just a few months beforehad seemed impossible.Like this mother, with access to the right informationat the right time, our healthcare system can be simpler, cheaper, and more effective. It is advisable to. It needs to be. And I’m going to stay madthat it’s not until it is. Thank you.( Applause ).
