Why Americans for Lower Drug Prices Exists: A Story from a Pharmacy Drive-Thru Window

By ALDP Co-Founders Michael Glassner and Jason Young

The moment that changes everything is rarely the one you expect.

One of ALDP’s co-founders, Jason, was driving a friend to pick up his prescription. The friend is over 80, and that day his condition made it impossible for him to walk inside. At the drive-thru window, Jason became an inadvertent witness to a transaction that happens thousands of times every single day in America – one that should enrage us all.

“The pharmacist told my friend the price for Eliquis, a blood thinner he desperately needed: over a thousand dollars. I watched his face fall. He did the math in his head – the calculation millions of Americans make every month. Rent or medicine? Food or medicine? Heat or medicine? He declined the prescription.

I felt I should stay silent, because I respect privacy. But watching someone choose to go without medication that could prevent a stroke felt like watching someone drown. So I asked the pharmacist a question I’ll never forget: How many times a day does this happen?’

She looked at me with real pain in her eyes and said, “It’s worse than you think. Something has to be done.”

She was right. And within weeks, my friend’s health declined dramatically – exactly as anyone with a medical background would have predicted.”

This Isn’t About One Person

Since that day, our team has spoken with dozens of patients facing the same impossible choices:

An epilepsy patient rationing her medications and relying on the local food pantry to try to have enough to take care of her kids.
A woman and her young son with the same inherited blood disorder that requires expensive lifelong medication.
A man with post-surgical complications who, for a month, couldn’t get the treatment his doctor prescribed because he simply couldn’t afford it.

The people we have been talking to aren’t looking for handouts. They’re hardworking Americans, veterans, people with disabilities, and seniors. They’re doing everything they can, but pharmaceutical companies and the U.S. drug pricing system – the one that Pharma lobbies and litigates to shape and control – are failing them.

Two of the patients we spoke to while we were working to get ALDP off the ground have died. They are two of the millions of patients in our hearts and minds and ultimately the reason Americans for Lower Drug Prices was created. Now, in their honor, we are working to take these first steps in bringing this much-needed change.

High List Prices Are Designed to Be That Way

Here’s what most Americans don’t know: the people who can least afford medication often pay the highest prices.

The uninsured pay list price. People with high-deductible plans pay list price until they hit their deductible. People with coinsurance pay a percentage of list price. Drug manufacturers offer patient assistance programs – but they often exclude people in need with arbitrary income cutoffs, complex applications, and time limits. They’re a band-aid on a broken bone. Some experts have even characterized them as more of a public relations endeavor, not actual health care.

The list prices themselves? They’re not based on development costs. They’re based on what the market will bear – which, some say, really means “How much profit can we make before someone stops us?”

Why a 501(c)(4)?

Americans for Lower Drug Prices is a 501(c)(4) organization because this is fundamentally a political problem requiring political solutions.

Fixing high drug prices will take a lot of work. Some states have created Prescription Drug Affordability Boards, put price caps on specific medications, or have passed transparency laws that have helped bring down costs for the most expensive drugs. Nationally, President Trump’s Most-Favored-Nation executive order is helping bring American prices down to the level other countries pay.

This isn’t about being anti-pharmaceutical industry. Surveys routinely show that 90% of Americans agree drug prices are too high, and everyone from President Trump to Senator Bernie Sanders has used their bully pulpits on the issue.

It’s time to ﬁx it, which is what we intend to do.

The Price is the Problem.

That pharmacist Jason encountered was right. Something has to be done. We think about what she said often. She’s seen this tragedy play out hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. She knows what happens when patients leave without their medications. She knows the system is broken. But she can’t ﬁx it alone. Neither can we, and neither can you. But together, we can.

That’s ALDP’s mission. Making sure that life-saving medications are accessible to everyone. Join us.