Opinion | ‘A 400% Price Increase Is Preposterous’: What We Heard This Week

“Why do you need this much money? A 400% price increase is preposterous.” — Senator Mike Braun (R-Ind.) pressing Moderna’s CEO to lower the price of its COVID-19 vaccine (Spikevax) during a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

“This is the way that medicine should be practiced.” — Diana Nole, of Microsoft’s Nuance Healthcare, discussing a fully-automatic clinical documentation app for patient visits powered by GPT-4 that will be released later this year.

“How do our biases and our decisions impact the outcomes and the treatments that patients get?” — Mary Byrn, PhD, RN, of Loyola University Chicago, discussing the differences in perinatal care some Black women receive compared with white women.

“A decade from now it’s going to be 30 times more powerful — that’s the difference between a bicycle and a racing car.” — Robert Pearl, MD, of Stanford University in California, commenting on how the potential of generative artificial intelligence’s impact on healthcare has been significantly understated.

“The vast majority of applicants simply aren’t in a position to rule out half of the programs in the country — unless they’re willing to choose a different career path.” — Bryan Carmody, MD, of Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, on how the ob/gyn residency remained a competitive specialty this year despite less abortion access in parts of the country.

“It’s an ideal time to provide postpartum contraception because patients are already there.” — Sarah Averbach, MD, of the University of California San Diego, inserting an IUD at 2 to 4 weeks postpartum.

“It’s part of realizing that individual blaming is not productive for the people experiencing obesity.” — Elaine Waxman, MPP, PhD, senior fellow at Urban Institute, on how living in areas with a higher density of food stores that carry less healthy options was linked with higher obesity prevalence.