10 healthcare transformers shared the biggest misconceptions about their industry, from drug prices to psychedelics

Business Insider

Business Insider recently named 100 people transforming business, including 10 standout leaders in healthcare.
The experts include leaders of big drug companies and health insurers, pioneers in treating thorny diseases, and inventors of blockbuster new tech.
We asked them to share the biggest misconception about their industry.
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In the sprawling, complex world of healthcare, there’s always something new to learn.

So we decided to ask the experts: What’s the biggest misconception about healthcare?

We posed the question to 10 notable healthcare leaders, who were just named to Business Insider’s list of 100 people transforming business.

Our experts lead giant drug companies and health insurers, have pioneered new ways of treating thorny diseases, and helped invent blockbuster new technologies like gene-editing tool Crispr. Here’s what they said.

Sometimes we’re getting ripped off by high drug prices, but not always

There’s been an uproar in recent years about the US’s too-high drug prices, and for good reason.

But there’s more to it than that, says Steven Pearson. A physician, Pearson founded the nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, which evaluates whether expensive drugs are worth it for patients and the healthcare system.

ICER has found that some expensive treatments for children with cancer are cost-effective, for instance, while other treatments are "where we’re really kind of wasting, if you will, our resources," Pearson said.

After all, there’s only so much money to pay for everyone’s care.

"It’s not just that the prices are too damn high, like the rent is too damn high," Pearson told Business Insider. "It’s really, we need a system that distinguishes when we’re getting good value, and the price at which it would be a fair value."

Not everyone in healthcare is looking out for you

Getting medical care in the US can be a perplexing, fragmented experience.

Your different doctors might not talk to eachother, for instance, and switching a medication from one pharmacy to another can be a disaster.

"I think there’s a misconception that all the people in the healthcare system are looking out for your benefit," says Rushika Fernandopulle, the founder and CEO of the startup Iora Health.

Employers and private health plans work with Iora, paying the company a monthly fee so the people they insure can get access to doctors and health coaches.

It’s not that people in healthcare are bad, Fernandopulle says, but rather that "there are many people who make decisions to benefit them and not you."

And that’s inspired him to remake the system, with the average person — and only the average person — in mind.

There’s more to the recent controversy about blockbuster gene-editing tool Crispr

Alexander Heinl/Picture alliance via Getty ImagesWhen most people hear the word "Crispr" — pronounced just like it looks — they think of twin babies in China.

That’s according to Jennifer Doudna, one of the inventors of the tool. She told Business Insider she learned about the babies, who’d reportedly had their genomes Crispr’d, in a "shattering" email sent to her by the scientist who did it.

And although Doudna sees that application of Crispr as shocking and unethical, she believes the tool has a handful of more practical and immediate uses.

"People often think of Crispr, especially with the recent news out of China, in the context of something that’s scary, or something that’s being used to make edits to people. That’s only a very tiny aspect of the technology," Doudna told Business Insider.

Besides modifying human genomes, Crispr can also be used to tweak and improve our food, Doudna said.

Crispr’s agricultural appeal is straightforward: it’s cheaper and easier than traditional breeding methods, including those that are used to make genetically modified crops (also known as GMOs) currently. It’s also much more precise. Where traditional breeding methods essentially toss new components into a crop’s genome, tools like Crispr slice and reshape with scalpel-like precision.

"It’s important to appreciate that this is a technology that’s very broad in its potential. It provides opportunities not only in biomedicine but also in agriculture. I think those are going to be hugely impactful," Doudna said.

Psychedelic drugs like ecstasy aren’t all the same

Tony Luong for Business InsiderThe rainbow of psychedelic drugs is as varied as it is stigmatized, according to Rick Doblin, the founder and leader of a nonprofit called MAPS that is leading the charge into turning illegal drugs like ecstasy (or MDMA) and magic mushrooms (or psilocybin) into medicines.

That runs counter to a big misconception in the field, which is that all psychedelic drugs feel and work the same, Doblin told Business Insider.

Doblin is leading clinical trials of MDMA with the goal of getting it approved as a medicine for the difficult-to-treat brain disease PTSD. He likes to describe MDMA as "gentler" than other psychedelics — such as ayahuasca or psilocybin. It’s a quality that he believes makes the drug the most fitting candidate for helping to treat PTSD, which frequently occurs after trauma.

"Even with scientists, I show a video of an MDMA therapy session, and they’re shocked that under the influence of MDMA you can have a PTSD patient talking calmly about the most horrific things. They’re talking, but their fear response is suppressed," Doblin said.

Doblin said there’s another big misunderstanding in his field as well. People tend to think of psychedelic therapy as simply taking a pill and being cured. But it’s not that simple, he said. In reality, taking a psychedelic seems to kick-start a process of therapy that can deepen over weeks, months, or even years.

"While there may be breakthroughs during the session, it’s about how people put it into practice that determines whether there are lasting benefits or not," Doblin said.

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Source: Business Insider – lramsey@businessinsider.com (Lydia Ramsey)