STAT

Opinion: Pharma should take a tip from the chemical industry to stem the outrage over drug pricing

The pharma industry needs to double down on direct community engagement and be far more transparent about drug pricing.
Americans aren't happy about the cost of drugs. Here New York City activists protest the high price of EpiPens.

No one seems to know what President Trump will say when (or if — he has postponed before) he addresses the nation this week on drug pricing. But the content doesn’t matter nearly as much as the implications. The mere fact that drug pricing has become such a populist issue that this president is devoting a policy speech to it will almost certainly roil markets and raise the collective blood pressure of pharmaceutical company CEOs.

When it comes to drug prices, an increasingly vocal majority of Americans now, for example, showed that only 13 percent of patients thought pharma companies effectively explain pricing policies.

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