PhRMA 2005 Annual Meeting: Welcome to the New PhRMA

PhRMA Annual Meeting
Washington, DC
March 18, 2005

You won’t notice the change, just walking through the offices. Or even in the faces of men and women who work there everyday. But there are big changes afoot at PhRMA.

If you listen carefully, you’ll hear it in the upbeat rhythm of the place; you’ll feel it in the air. There’s something different going on, perhaps best expressed by one of our nurse employees who rode the elevator with me one day last month, and who told me: “You know, Billy, I had forgotten why I came to work here. You reminded me again and now I’m excited to come to work each day."

PhRMA is finding its soul again and it’s a good and rewarding rediscovery. It’s all about remembering that we work on behalf of people who everyday save and extend human life, who everyday work to end the misery of human suffering, and who more than anyone else, give hope to those who wait impatiently for the discovery of the next generation of miracle medicines, critical to the life of someone they love.

At PhRMA we are rediscovering our purpose and redefining our mission. We are carefully organizing to join our great member companies on a journey that will lead us all back to the source of our inspiration to innovate and to succeed, a journey back to the patients we all serve. We are joining hands with those within our family who have listened, and then decided that it is not enough for you to discover and then market your medications. We must also dedicate ourselves to making sure those medications reach those who need them most. We must make sure our products are both available and affordable.

We at PhRMA want to thank all of the GAA volunteers who have designed the plans to place our industry squarely on the side of patients again, through the Affordability and Access programs. We will execute those programs with all of the assets at our command, particularly with the great men and women who work for you at PhRMA. We accept the profound challenge to do nothing less than to rescue and restore the reputation of our companies once regarded by Americans as national treasures, creating hope, and delivering on promised cures and treatments in the human fight against disease.

To do that, PhRMA has had to do what you have all done. We are going through a deep gut check.

• What are we all about?
• What do we do well?
• What could we do better?
• What are we failing to do?
• What should we be doing?

First, let us count our blessings. PhRMA does some things very well. We know that our member companies put a lot of resources into our trade association, and not just monetary resources. I have been truly impressed by the personal level of commitment that our CEOs and officers have in our association. That is a resource not available to other trade associations, and one I have already come to cherish. You deserve to get good results for those contributions, and you do.

Everyday that our state and local teams face the growing list of challenges at state and local government levels, you are well-rewarded. Everyday that our science and regulatory team works to improve the R&D environment and to ensure that we have transparent, efficient, and effective regulatory regimes, here and around the world, you are sustained in your mission. Everyday our international team tangles with a national ministry of health somewhere who is pursuing policies that discourage innovation, you are the better for it. Everyday our alliance team works to build relationships with patient groups and other associations, you are the ultimate beneficiary. And every time our policy and legal teams join together with our federal team here in Washington to inform the outcome of good and bad policy options circulating in this political and media cauldron of Washington, DC, you are greatly benefited. In many cases, like bread cast on the waters, the benefits of beating back just one bad policy is sometimes worth many times the total contributions you place here in PhRMA.

PhRMA has won some amazing victories for you and for the patients we all serve. PhRMA has been at the center of the fight to protect a private, market driven health care system for America, one where innovation is still rewarded, where patient choice is still respected, and where government rationing of health care is still generally regarded as an unacceptable principle.

And PhRMA has never forgotten its friends and allies. Not a single supporter of our policy objectives has lost his or her position because they have agreed with us and supported our causes. That is because the policies we support are the right ones, and they are politically sustainable because they address the real health needs of real people.

But as we look forward to see what we can do better, we see opportunities.

For PhRMA to continue to advocate well for our members, we must begin now to change the environment in which we work. If our industry continues to suffer a weakened public image, sooner or later we will begin to lose critical battles, sooner or later we will have fewer friends and allies, and sooner than later, the goals we share of pursuing innovation and discovery will suffer and with them the hopes and dreams of those who count on us in the battle against disease. That is simply unacceptable.

For PhRMA to continue to advocate well for our members, we must begin to correct the misconceptions and the outright fraudulent views that have been created about our work and our products. When we learn that most Americans believe that it takes only three to five years to bring a new medication to market, or that clinical trials involve only 400 or 500 people, or that some believe that not all of the clinical trial information is shared with the FDA in the approval process, or that drugs are unsafe if they have any side effects, or that no post-marketing surveillance now occurs, we realize what a massive education job we have before us.

We know that a new medication requires an average of 14 years in development and testing. We know that thousands of people are involved in multiple clinical trials lasting years, and we know that all, 100 percent of the clinical trial data, is available to the FDA for their review and analysis, and we know that most, if not all, products have side effects, but that balancing risks against benefits is what the FDA and doctors and patients do everyday. And we know that we will spend now about $1 billion dollars for every new medication our companies produce and market for America’s patients. But we have not told our story well enough or often enough to the people who need to hear it the most – the patients we serve. That is unacceptable.

PhRMA must adapt itself to two new missions, both of which, if executed properly, will allow us to continue to advocate well for our members.

First, we must accept the challenge to educate. To educate and inform our country about the good and effective science that underlies our work, about the processes by which we test and seek approval of the products we make, and about the costs, risks, benefits and safety elements of all the products we discover and bring to the American health care marketplace. A properly-informed America, I believe, and I have come to trust, will do the right thing. Bringing them the facts, the whole accurate truth, is also the right thing to do. With your help, we will do nothing less.

We at PhRMA must also embrace a mission to communicate to the American public, that this, our industry, is all about saving lives, and battling disease, and that we are committed to making sure our health care system works to bring affordable medications to all in America who depend upon them.

That means that we must work day and night on the problem of health care coverage. We must be the leaders in the effort to enroll our seniors in the new prescription drug benefits provided under Medicare (the Discount Cards, the cash benefit this year, and the drug coverage in 2006). That also means rolling out successfully the national launch of our Partners for Patient Assistance Program to reach as many Americans as we can with the company plans that provide free or low-cost medicines to qualified patients who need a helping hand. And it means defending our health care system against abusive litigation, both at the state and national levels. And it also means aggressively working on the problem of the uninsured and underinsured so that these patients can benefit from the coverage and private-sector price negotiations available to Americans with prescription drug insurance.

But it also means something else. It means that PhRMA must and will become an important asset in the member companies’ efforts to communicate to Americans that we are firmly and irrevocably on the side of American patients in all that we do.

So our three missions will be to educate, and to communicate, all the better, to advocate for the causes, which, as that young lady reminded, me, makes her excited to come to work at PhRMA each day.

We will continue to build strong and enduring alliances for those causes. We will work with and along side anyone or any group or organizations that believe in a great American health care system, that inspires innovation and discovery, and that respects patient choices and options.

But we will not tolerate cheap shots from anyone. Nor will we tolerate those who believe they can profit from our current discomforts. We will be as forceful in our defense as we are in the defense of the causes for which we fight.

Tip O’Neil was once visited by a young Democratic freshman who said something about the Republicans being the enemy. Tip laughed and corrected him. “No, young man,” he said, “the Republicans are not the enemy. The Republicans are the opposition. The Senate is the enemy.” I’m sure the Senate sometimes believes it is the House that is the enemy.

Well, let the word go forth. PhRMA has no enemies but one.

Disease is our enemy. It is disease that costs us so much in America. It is disease that robs us of our lives and our vitality and our resources. And it is disease that we are committed to fight on behalf of every American who confronts it in all of its miserable forms.

We at PhRMA know that it is health care value we seek. It is a healthier and more productive America that we promote. It is a country that always encourages and supports the spirit of discovery and innovation – most especially when it comes to our health care, which we cherish.

That is the truth about our industry which every sick person, every patient affected by some horrible disease, personally understands.

It will be our mission to make sure that everyone else in America comes back to that understanding. We have a good story to tell.

Our industry gave away, free, 22 million prescription medicines worth over $4.7 billion wholesale to over 6.6 million American patients last year. Who knows about it?

Our industry distributes billions of dollars of free medicines through doctor offices each year. These supplies are often provided by doctors to help patients without insurance. Who noticed it?

Our industry donated over $4.1 billion in the last few years to assist patients all over the developing world. We gave over $183 million to tsunami relief alone, and countless millions to fight HIV-Aids, including developing about 80 different medicines in the fight with 98 new HIV-Aids medicines now in the pipeline. What have you read or heard about these efforts?

The scientists and academicians, the lab workers and researchers, the thousands upon thousands of Americans who go to work in all of our companies each day hoping that this day will be a great day of discovery, know our story, but it is still a too well kept secret. That, most of all, is unacceptable.

We also have a story to tell Americans about what happens when a country loses its private health care decision making to government bureaucrats.

When some government-controlled health care systems around the world will not even let its citizens hear about a new medicine, that should be a warning to our country. When another government health ministry will not approve even one – not a single Alzheimer’s medicine; or when another requires you to have at least one broken bone before you can get an osteoporosis medicine commonly prescribed here in the U.S.; those are the pictures of health care policy failure. Americans would not put up with that kind of a health care system.

In that very profound human moment when we sit with our doctor and our principal caregiver to make a life or death decision on a medicine or surgical procedure, the last person anyone should want in that room is some federal bureaucrat telling us what we can or cannot choose. That is totally unacceptable for America and for the patients we serve.

Failure in our overall mission to preserve our free market health care system is simply not an option.

We have a window of opportunity now – to tell our story – to do the right things – to rescue and restore our reputation, and to rebuild America’s faith and trust in our industry, which is all about making miracles happen, and dispensing hope and optimism in a world grown weary of disease.

I have only recently experienced the pain and despair that disease can bring. Just a year ago today I was awaking from extensive cancer surgery and beginning a year long series of chemotherapy and radiation. I had received the last sacrament of my church, and I was prepared to say good-by to everyone I care about in life. But a medicine only recently approved by the FDA was offered to me. It was risky, I was told, but my doctor and caregiver and I made the right choice. No bureaucrat was in that room – just the three of us. But with us in spirit were the men and women of one of our companies who had put in the long years of research and testing and development to bring this new medicine to market.

Just a few weeks ago I traveled to the company headquarters and met those men and women. In an auditorium there I had the privilege of personally thanking them for my life. Few people get that chance to say thank you to the life givers of our industry. I did, and it was a powerful and emotional moment in my life.

So, I have come to PhRMA with this as my personal mission -- to do what I can to serve an industry which now has given me the gift of life.

I need your help to carry out this mission. I know that I and the talented men and women of PhRMA can count on you. A lot of folks across America are counting on all of us.