J&J Innovative Medicine’s continuous R&D investments, totaling over $90 billion since 2016, are helping save lives today and bringing hope to patients tomorrow.  Yet, patients’ affordable access to lifesaving medicines is becoming harder each year because of increasing out-of-pocket costs, inadequate insurance benefit design and regulatory hurdles.

The 340B Drug Pricing Program was designed to help eligible safety-net healthcare providers provide access to more affordable medicines for low-income and vulnerable patients. Unfortunately, patients today are not directly benefiting from the program amidst widespread abuse and misuse.

Biopharmaceutical research in the United States is a long and uncertain endeavor, driven by the complexity of hard-to-treat diseases, high development costs and intricate regulatory requirements. Yet patients in the U.S. benefit from biopharmaceutical innovators’ ability to invest billions of dollars into research and development because of the backbone supporting American innovation: the U.S. intellectual property (IP) system.

A core principle of the U.S. healthcare system is that treatment decisions should be made through shared decision-making between patients and physicians. This decision is informed by an individual’s medical history, disease state and personal preferences and is influenced by the patient’s insurance design benefit.

The American approach to valuing medicines should reflect the diverse, decentralized U.S. system — a system that supports treatment decisions that fit the unique needs of each patient.