Unsustainable Pharmaceutical Prices and Potential Solutions
The annual U.S. market for prescription drugs is more than $500 billion, representing almost 17% of all health care expenditures, and it is rising at an unsustainable rate. In 2017, the average American spent $1,100 per year on medications. It is, therefore, no wonder that the public and elected officials are fixated on understanding the factors leading to high prices and forging workable policy solutions. Dr. Sean Sullivan, a health economist and expert on drug pricing, will discuss the many reasons why prescription drugs cost so much in the US and the options to address the problem.
Dr. Sullivan is Professor and Dean, University of Washington School of Pharmacy. He holds a joint appointment as Professor of Health Services in the School of Public Health. He holds adjunct appointments in the School of Medicine, the Public Health Sciences Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute.
He completed training in pharmacy at Oregon State University in 1983, obtained a master’s degree at the University of Texas in 1986 and a PhD in health economics and policy at the University of California-Berkeley in 1991.
Dr. Sullivan has authored more than 400 journal articles, book chapters, task force reports and organizational and governmental publications. In many of these, he has assessed the evidence and applications of medical technology in relation to coverage and reimbursement decisions. His research interests include technology assessment, medical decision-making and economic evaluation of medical technology. He is past president of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) and past chair of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) executive committee of the Format for Formulary Submissions– the United States evidence-based guidelines for formulary decision-making.
Dr. Sullivan served as a member of the Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee, a member of the Regence Blue Shield and Premera Blue Cross P/T Committee and chair, Premera Blue Cross Value Assessment Committee. He currently serves on the Advisory Board for ICER. He served for 10 years as co-editor of Value in Health, and on the editorial boards for PharmacoEconomics, Journal of Managed Care Pharmacy, and the Journal of Medical Economics. He was awarded the 2014 Stephen G. Avey Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy and the 2015 APhA Academy of Pharmaceutical Research Sciences (APRS) Research Achievement Award.
