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 going to do?
Am I going to get my medicine
or am I going to 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 and 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.
We are building the 21st-century pharmacy experience
that low-income families deserve.
Patients can register in under five minutes
and have access to over 500 different medications,
a stable list of medications for everything from heart disease
to mental health conditions,
actually representing over 75 percent of all prescriptions prescribed
in the United States today.
We also partner with a network of doctors, nurses and case managers
at community health centers and free clinics
that refer patients to the service.
We make it as easy for these health care providers
to have a prescription filled with donated medications
as it is to send a prescription to a local pharmacy.
And patients can pick up medications on-site at one of our partners
or have medications delivered directly to their home.
By circumventing the traditional supply chain,
we're able to offer flat, transparent pricing --
about two dollars for a month's supply of most medications.
And that allows a predictable, affordable price
that folks can actually budget for.
We've already supplied enough medication for 150,000 people.
But we can do more.
Our goal is to reach one million people
with approaching a billion dollars of unused medicine
in the next five years,
scaling our program to 12 states.
At this scale, we can actually cover communities that are home
to 40 percent of the 10 million people
who lack consistent, affordable access.
Our direct service to one million people
will drive price competition for so many more.
Walmart launched one of the only price innovations in pharmacy
in 2006,
by offering a limited list of medications
for a flat fee of four dollars.
This sparked incredible change.
It sparked competitors to offer other lists
and price match guarantees.
By targeting transparent, affordable medications
into these new states,
we can actually drive regional price competition
that drives down the prices for entire low-income communities.
Our health care system is complex.
It is daunting.
It feels impossible to make headway.
But we can completely reimagine medicine access.
By using surplus medications as a beachhead to force change
into this multibillion dollar industry,
we can create radical access to medications
based on a fundamental belief
that people who live in one of the wealthiest nations in the world
can and should have access to medicine that they need
to survive and to thrive.
I do not pretend to have all of the answers
to fix all of the problems in our health care system.
But getting medications to the millions of people
who need it to live a healthy life,
saving medicine to save lives --
that is something we can do today.
Thank you.