chair of the Alliance for Aging Research Board of Directors.
No matter what our age and stage, as the calendar advances from one year to the next, it offers a compelling opportunity to take account of our lives and look ahead to the future. This holds especially true for those of us who are committed to supporting healthy aging, and for those of us who are personally working to sustain our health and quality of life as we navigate our individual aging processes.
There are long-held values that inform our goal setting at the Alliance from year to year. We work to foster respect for the aging, create systems that allow people to live their lives with dignity, and support independence for the aging to the extent of their abilities. Guided by these absolutes, here is my personal “wish list” for 2023:
Focus on maximizing what we’ve got. I am a firm believer that focusing intensely on what is available right now, and maximizing our use of it, can help vault us in the future. Nowhere is this more evident than in the detection and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The CMS action to delay current and potentially future availability of medications to treat this widespread disease, despite approval by the FDA, deprives patients of access to treatments for the disease. Let’s get CMS out of the drug approval business and put its focus back where it belongs: ensuring that financial considerations related to the release of a new medications are determined long before the FDA acts.
Protect incentives for the development of new medications. With the precedent set by the delaying action on certain drugs, pharmaceutical companies face a potentially challenging and uncertain path to get their products to market. Let’s make sure that we remove barriers and create systems that instead speed the development of new medications and ensure their swift availability to the patients who need them.
Level the playing field when it comes to negotiating drug prices. Congress has been praised for incorporating a provision in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act that would empower Medicare to negotiate some high-cost drug prices by 2026. On the face of it, this looks like progress. But look again and it’s easy to see that this is a very limited action and more an edict than a negotiation. Put simply, the government has the power to tell pharmaceutical companies to lower the prices of expensive drugs. If the drug companies refuse, the government can move on to another supplier. I’m all for working to lower drug prices, but let’s get the government out of negotiating these prices. Let me be clear here about what I am wishing for: the government needs to be involved in this negotiation but is more appropriately an arbitrator among equals, than a take-it-or-leave-it- negotiator that could leave patients out in the cold.
Let’s modify our health system to focus as much on wellness and prevention, as we do on illness. I know this is a very big wish, and one that would require Herculean efforts in many areas. But let’s start with older adults and focus on ensuring that more individuals check in for the wellness visits provided by Medicare. A recent survey found that less than 20% of eligible adults take advantage of this benefit. The barriers are many: not all Medicare providers offer these visits, many seniors are simply unaware of them, and they require navigating a frequently confusing health care system. But the potential benefits are enormous. These valuable visits include assessments of a senior’s health status and conclude with a tailored plan for lifestyle interventions, potentially preventing depression, cognitive impairment, and the risk of devastating falls.
So along with my wish list for the New Year, I’m making a firm resolution to continue working with and on behalf of the Alliance for Aging Research. Their track record of making life better for millions of Americans is, for me, one of the surest ways to turn my hopes into reality.
