September 20, 2006

Bringing a Knife to a Gunfight

by

Major national public opinion polls show healthcare to be among the top five issues on voters’ minds as the country heads into the election season. Just after Labor Day, Harris asked Americans what they saw as the “most important issues for the government to address.”

“The war” ranked first, at 22%
“The economy” was second, at 13%
“Healthcare” was a close third, at 12%

Political debates quickly reduce to good guys, heroes, and saviors fighting bad guys, villains, and sinners. In the healthcare debate, the pharmaceutical industry daily finds itself in the latter category with maddening consistency.

From a reputational standpoint, the industry has taken a lot of bullets. The way my colleagues and I see it, the industry is more often than not bringing a knife to these gunfights.

Big Pharma is far from perfect, but it can legitimately lay claim to scientific and medical advances that have in recent years alone…

…made ulcer surgery a relic of the past
…reduced hospitalization and surgery for heart disease
…delayed the need for nursing home care for many Alzheimer’s patients
…prevented strokes
…decreased the death rate for HIV and AIDS, and
…increased survival rates for people fighting cancer

No, the pharmaceutical industry shouldn’t expect a big wet kiss in the court of public opinion, but it deserves a lot better than the beating it’s taken, especially at the hands of trial lawyers. The amount of monetary damages in pharma-related cases is staggering. Estimates peg the American “tort tax” at $40 billion, an economic behemoth roughly twice the size of Coca-Cola and almost precisely the same amount, $39.4 billion, invested in 2005 by the pharmaceutical industry for the research and development of new, life-saving therapies. Litigation costs have also helped drive up the price of health insurance, which has risen 11-14% each year since 2001.

In MS&L’s view, the pharmaceutical industry must develop comprehensive, holistic strategies that harness the power of media relations and communications, legal strategy, and public opinion research (the weapons so successfully utilized by the trial bar and its allies) to protect itself against a coming barrage of reputation- and business-destroying attacks. What we continue to see is siloed, legally-focused responses to well-developed, comprehensive campaigns orchestrated by plaintiff attorneys.

My colleague Peter Pitts and I authored a white paper that expands on this problem and offers tangible and workable advice for pharmaceutical companies to level the reputational playing field. It’s called “America’s Legal System Is Dangerous To Its Health.”

It draws on our experience, observations and fervent hope that the industry will heed this important wake-up call.

I hope you’ll give the full paper a read – and post your thoughts here.

Posted by at 03:42 PM
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