PhRMA’s new talking point 
STAT's Rachel Cohrs, David Mitchell, and Gunnar Esiason
PhRMA CEO Steve Ubl gave a glimpse into the group’s next push on drug pricing — more co-pay caps. In an appearance at the STAT Summit on Tuesday, he criticized Democrats for not including more patient cost protections in their recent drug pricing law. “They could have eliminated the deductible, they could have lowered cost sharing. They could have established what would patients pay based on the net price…. They could have done an out of pocket cap for things other than insulin,” Ubl said. The debate bubbled up later at the Summit, too, in an exchange between two patients who both take expensive medications to survive, my colleague Bob Herman noted. “There’s no greater crunch on affordability than what the out-of-pocket cost burden is for people with lifelong disease,” said Gunnar Esiason, a cystic fibrosis patient who advocates for policies that facilitate early-stage drug development. David Mitchell, a cancer patient and founder of drug pricing advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs, agreed insurance design remains “wacky” even after the IRA, which doesn’t apply to commercial insurance. But, he said, “lowering out-of-pocket without lowering prices is merely a cost-shift, and that’s why it is so critical that we continue to work to try and arrive at prices that are appropriate.” | 
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