Every day in this country,
families are forced to make impossible choices
when it comes to their health care,
like Kimberly, who said,
"There was times I had to choose between my food and my pills.
It wasn't luxury stuff,
because I didn't make that much.
It was like, can I get shampoo or conditioner?
Things you take for granted.
And Debbie, who said,
"You put your medicine in one hand,
your living costs in the other.
OK, well what am I gonna do?
Am I gonna get my medicine
or am I gonna pay my bills?
Well, I can't live without my medicine,
but I can't live if I don't pay my bills."
Ten thousand people die every month in this country
because they don't take the medicine that they need.
More people die from not taking medications
than opioid overdoses and car accidents combined.
But you can't take medicine if you can't afford it.
Today, the average household
spends 3,000 dollars a year on medications.
About a third of folks who are uninsured
said that they stopped taking medicine as prescribed
because of cost.
Even folks with insurance,
if they make under 35,000 dollars a year,
half of them report skipping the medications
if their insurance doesn't cover it.
So there are 10 million adults like Kimberly and like Debbie
who are forced to make impossible choices every day.
We all know that prescription drug prices are too high,
and our health care system,
that makes some folks uninsured and other folks underinsured,
doesn't prioritize people who need access now
and need medications now.
Ten million, it's a big number,
but it's also a solvable number,
because there's also 10 billion dollars of perfectly good unused medication
that goes to waste.
So this is an injustice on two sides:
people not getting the medicine that they need to survive and to thrive,
and that very same medication being sent to a medical waste incinerator
to be destroyed.
This waste is unconscionable, but it also offers an opportunity.
I started SIRUM,
a not for profit technology company, with my cofounders Adam and George,
to turn discarded medications into a lifeline
just like the medications in this warehouse.
We may not be able to fix
all the ways in which our health care system is failing us,
but we can fix this one.
Medications come from manufacturers and wholesalers who have safety stock,
and when it's short-dated, they destroy it.
It also comes from health care facilities like hospitals, pharmacies
and nursing homes who end up with surplus
when a patient stops taking medication or when they pass away.
We can use this untapped source of medications
to supply all 10 million people who need medications,
and we can do this today.
SIRUM gets surplus medications
by putting recycling bins into these hundreds of facilities
that have surplus.
They fill the bin, and when the box is full,
SIRUM initiates a courier pickup to pick up that medication,
and we handle the shipping, the tracking, the manifests, and the tax receipt.
Medicine donors want to donate because it's actually cheaper an easier
than the highly regulated medicine destruction process,
and there are strong tax incentives to actually donate.
We then deliver those donated medications to people who need it.
A new prescription comes in,
and our platform matches that patient need with the inventory that's available.
Our platform then generates a warehouse pick list,
the medications are picked and the prescriptions filled.