About 24 percent of adults report difficulty in affording prescription drugs, including 9 percent who report it is “very difficult” to afford them and 15 percent who report it is “somewhat difficult.” Approximately 11 percent of adults reported rationing high-priced drugs in 2017.
Recently, @Arnold_Ventures launched a new podcast, “Deep Dive with Laura Arnold,” that tackles the issue of drug prices. In its debut episode, podcast host Laura Arnold sits down with David Mitchell, founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs, who began his fight for drug pricing reform after a devastating diagnosis of an incurable blood cancer. The cost of his medicine each year: $325,000. They discuss a broken system built to serve those who make money — not those who depend on it for their health.
“Our mission is to improve people’s lives by fixing broken systems,” Arnold says. “We view drug pricing as a broken system, and not just from a theoretical perspective, but from a human perspective. We see this as a crisis in our nation. People can’t afford their drugs, and the consequences for all of us, both personally and from a societal perspective, are dire.”