1

POLICY ACTION PLAN

Policy Action Plan

Grisnel Rosario-Hernandez

Nursing Department, Delaware Technical Community College

NUR 420 Nursing Policy

Prof. Tammy Layer

February 18, 2024

 2
POLICY ACTION PLAN

One of the main challenges for Americans who get sick or suffer a chronic medical

condition is how to afford the increasing cost of prescription drugs. Unfortunately, this is an

inescapable topic for those who depend on a prescribed drugs to maintain a baseline of health,

manage a chronic disease, or receive treatment for a complex medical problem. “In countries

without universal healthcare, the high cost of prescription drugs poses an additional threat:

unaffordable out-of-pocket costs for individual patients. Approximately 25% of Americans find it

difficult to afford prescription drugs due to high out-of-pocket costs” (Vincent Rajkumar, 2020).

According to Sofer in her article published by the American Journal of Nursing, the logic

behind the skyrocketing prices for prescriptions in US when compared to other nations in the

world must do mainly with the type of medication purchased, since more than 72% of the

acquired medications are deemed brand-name while less than 10% of the dispensed drugs are

bioequivalent. The other reason for the increased prices has to do with the time a manufacturer

keeps the exclusivity of the patent, which is usually 12.5 years from the time the medication

receives the green light from the Federal Drug Administration. Lastly, the other reason for the

increase in price is due to the ability of pharmaceuticals to negotiate and set their own

medication prices (Sofer, para 5. 2016).

As we can see, the pharmaceutical companies have the freedom to set their own prices

and essentially control the market of prescription drugs to their benefit. While it is

understandable that these companies are not community owned and their aim is to generate

profits from their innovation, some controls should be put in place to make the price of

medications (especially those proven to successfully treat life-threatening diseases) more

accessible to consumers regardless of their ability to pay.

 3
POLICY ACTION PLAN
To achieve this, we can put in place several strategies to increase equity:

1. Take into consideration what disease the medication is treating. Those medications

designed to treat life-threatening diseases, most of them responsible for the high rates

of hospitalization, should be negotiated at a lower price. “High prescription drug

prices are sustained by the fact that treatments for serious disease are not luxury items

but are needed by vulnerable patients who seek to improve the quality of life or to

prolong life” (Vincent Rajkumar, 2020).

2. End the of an agency with legal power to regulate the price of medications. “Prices

for brand-name prescription drugs are 35 to 55 percent lower in other industrialized

countries than in the United States. The central reason for these price differentials is

that Canada and most European countries (13 of the 15 countries in Western Europe)

directly regulate the prices of prescription drugs” (Frank, 2004). Adopting a similar

model could be beneficial to consumers in the US, just like Medicaid and Veterans

Administration success in negotiating low prices for their prescriptions.

3. Make imports of medications available for consumers as a cost reducing strategy,

after validating the safety of the product by the FDA.

4. Increase physician’s knowledge about the cost of medications depending on the

patient’s insurance and encourage them to speak about medication affordability and

adherence to their patients before prescribing. “Price-informed care has been shown

to reduce unnecessary medical spending” (National Academies of Sciences,

Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division; Board on Health Care

Services, 2017).
 4
POLICY ACTION PLAN
The key question here is how we can achieve changes in policies that can benefit

individuals in our community. As nurses we have a duty to be active advocates to our patients.

When it comes to prescription prices, our own micro-population is involved.

The following is an 90 day action plan to address the increased prices of medications and

affordability in my local community:

1. Reach out to the community for support by providing information to the public that is

concise about the current state of prescription drug prices, how pharmaceutical

companies have control on how the price is set, and invite the community to reach to our

local lawmakers with questions on how they are addressing this issue.

2. Get the local healthcare system involved in the effort. This involvement can be as simple

as assisting with caregiver education on medication affordability, so they can have

conversations with their patients about medication adherence and affordability and tackle

the best alternative for their patients to get access to their prescriptions. This effort could

be undertaken in collaboration with case management and the pharmacist that assist the

healthcare system.

3. Reach out to local lawmakers about the issue with data gathered about the local efforts

and our achievements. The intention is to show lawmakers reliable that data potentially

showing how our patients are able to get prescriptions that match their budgets, and our

results in terms of the percentage of those patients coming back to our health system due

to medication noncompliance. Hopefully, by increasing literacy and encouraging

informed decision making we can see improvements in our rates as a system.

The road to medication affordability and to regulation of medication prices has proven to be

long and mostly undefeated due to the aggressive lobbying from the pharmaceutical companies.
 5
POLICY ACTION PLAN
However, there is always hope when we can see the success of other countries at making sure

their citizens are able to equally access prescriptions without having to go bankrupt to prolong

their lives.
 6
POLICY ACTION PLAN
References:

Frank, R. (2004). Prescription drug prices. New England Journal of Medicine. 351:1375-1377

DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp048158

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division;

Board on Health Care Services; Committee on Ensuring Patient Access to Affordable

Drug Therapies (2017). Making Medicines Affordable: A National Imperative. Retrieved

from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493090/

Sofer, Dalia. The High Cost of Prescription Drugs in America. AJN, American Journal of

Nursing 116(12): p 14, December 2016. | DOI: 10.1097/01.NAJ.0000508647.48317.35

Vincent Rajkumar S. (2020). The high cost of prescription drugs causes and solutions. Blood

cancer journal, 10(6), 71. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41408-020-0338-x