Public Health Crises And Pharmaceutical Interventions: Improving Access While Ensuring Fiscal Sustainability

Over the past several decades, persistent growth in health care costs has placed significant pressure on state budgets. Consequently, governors have a vested interest in pursuing value-based health care reforms that lead to better health for their residents while reducing costs. Governors may have to make difficult trade-offs between maximizing the availability of numerous services and treatments and ensuring the fiscal sustainability of the programs they administer. Recently, pharmaceutical innovations have become a central part of this discussion. For states, the balance between access and affordability is particularly difficult during a public health crisis, when the desire for widespread access to life-changing medicines is acute and strategies for rapid and effective dissemination present an operational and fiscal challenge.