Axios Event: "Broken" American health care system draws bipartisan focus, lawmakers say

WASHINGTON – Improving drug access and affordability is a key health care policy issue with strong bipartisan support, health care experts said at an Axios roundtable on June 12.

• Axios' Adriel Bettelheim and Tina Reed moderated the discussion, sponsored by Sandoz.

What they're saying: "Democrats tend to favor access, Republicans frequently focus on cost – the reality is they're totally interconnected," Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said. "You can't sustain access unless you have affordability."

• Congress must come together to develop solutions for both issues, he added.

The big picture: Fixing the "broken" American health care system is a fundamental challenge for lawmakers, as many Americans struggle with high costs, Welch and Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) agreed.

• "The fundamental challenge I think for us in Congress is to internalize that the medical system right now is really broken, and trying to achieve savings by literally having people who need health care not get it just shifts the cost, because people who need health care are going to go to their community hospitals. … Those hospitals will respond until they can't," Welch said.
• "The system is broken," Buchanan said. "We're paying more and more, 20% of the GDP is going into health care, and we're getting sicker and sicker. My sense of it is you've got to be the CEO of your own health. People have to take more responsibility, and we'll help people where we can. But I think the system we've got clearly doesn't work."
• "We can't rely on the system that's out there because we're drowning in debt. … We've got to look at doing things differently," he said. "We've got a lot of people who can't even afford insurance, and the whole thing is really out of whack. … This should be a bipartisan thing."

Zoom in: Patent reform and competition are two areas that attendees referenced as potential solutions to improve affordability.

• "We understand why [patent protection rights have] to be preserved," Welch said. "But what we don't want to have is a gaming system where that patent that was supposedly for 12 years. let's say. suddenly becomes 30 or 35, and you stop innovation, and you stop cost containment."
• Patent issues make it difficult for other options like generics or biosimilars to enter the market, said Rutgers Law School professor Michael Carrier, even though "patents are supposed to promote innovation."
• "There's a lot of low-hanging fruit" for bipartisan legislation on the subject of competition, he said.

Zoom out: Solutions to drive down costs and expand access for drugs should focus on the patients who need them, attendees agreed.

• One of the key ways the health care system is broken is that "the market doesn't necessarily compete on what matters for the people that it serves," Maryland Health Secretary Meena Seshamani said.
• "[H]ow do we create more avenues for competition on the things that matter for people? And this comes back to innovation," she said.