The deliberation I attended, “Epi Prices: The Rising Drug Costs and Our Inability to Pay,” was an issue unique to me, thus making it interesting as it sparked my interest. As someone with no allergies or a customer of necessary medical drugs, the theme of the deliberation had been foreign to me growing up as most of the deliberation was centered around drugs that could determine life or death to others with life threatening allergies or diseases. However, this didn’t deter my interest, it ignited it, opening my mind to problems I hadn’t thought about.
The first approach of the deliberation proposed government regulation. Because the FDA approval takes years and drug companies set the prices of their drugs, the team hopes to see a quicker approval of drugs and an increase in the government’s involvement in healthcare to take away some of the drug company’s control and to make room for Medicare to negotiate prices. Although I think there are good advantages to this proposal and some of the tasks are doable, I also worry about the requirement of increased spending to make these changes possible which would contradict the goal of the solution.
The second approach intrudes the misconceptions of EpiPen expiration dates, imploring people to use them past their expiration date to avoid buying them more often. While this approach provides helpful information and may help people save money, a lot of the participants claimed that this approach to the issue acted more as a bandaid than an actual cure to the conflict as it is helpful, but may not be a complete, effective solution to the main issue of highly priced drugs in America’s current society. Additionally, although they provided accurate evidence of effectiveness after the expiration date, without a proper solution to this problem, many users of EpiPens will still continue buying once they have reached the date in order to feel more comfortable with its effectiveness.
Finally, the third approach offers the idea of government subsidies so that the pharmaceutical companies pay the difference in the expensive drugs to lower the cost to consumers of the drugs. I liked this approach as I believe it is a possible solution, however there are many risks with it and drug companies may choose to keep the prices they want regardless of the subsidies.
Overall, I believe that both government regulation and government subsidies are the best approaches to this solution as they can provoke real change, however, the hands off approach to me offers more of a helpful hint to saving money on EpiPens than a long term solution to the conflict.