Novartis CEO: We Are Helping In Bringing Cost Of Healthcare Down By Supporting The Affordable Healthcare Act

Joe Jimenez, CEO of Novartis AG (ADR) NVS was interviewed recently by CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he talked about how the GlaxoSmithKline plc (ADR) GSK is progressing and pharmaceutical pricing issue.

The Deal With GSK

“The whole genesis behind the transformation that we made on our portfolio, we announced it back in April and we closed part of the deal and the second part of the deal should close in the first part of [20]15, but the whole genesis was to focus Novartis on three leading businesses,” Jimenez said. “Our innovative pharmaceutical business, our Alcon eye care business and then generics because we are one of the only companies that has both innovative pharmaceuticals and also low cost generics.”

He continued, “So, we are able to go to health systems around the world and talk about the fact that we are helping them lower total healthcare and we are able to bring new innovative drugs like our new heart failure drug that’s about to come to the market.”

Isn’t Pharmaceutical Pricing Out Of Control?

“I have heard that comment before,” Jimenez said, “but if you go back to look at what the pharmaceutical industry did when we supported part of the Affordable Care Act around ensuring Americans. I am an American and I am running a Swiss company so I see all countries, most developed countries with universal healthcare and the US was one of the only countries that does not have universal healthcare.”

“So, we strongly supported that. We did contribute towards it with higher Medicare rebates and with fees, Affordable Care Act fees. So we are funding part of the Affordable Care Act.”