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May 17, 2026 16 mins

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Berry Show. An article in the Houston Business
Journal recently about John and Laura Arnold. John Arnold is
listed as the tenth richest Houstonian, his wealth estimated to
be about three billion dollars, but he did not continue

(00:23):
upon making it big to pursue wealth. He instead started
a foundation and started in a Bill Gates sort of way,
looking for opportunities to use that wealth toward policies that
were important to him, that are important to him. So
I read an article about a company called Civica RX,

(00:47):
which is a nonprofit generic drug company whose intention is
to keep the costs low for pharmaceuticals for low income
and high needs patients. So the article which I should
give credit to Chris Matthews, a gentleman who wrote it.
He deserves his due because he describes what happens. You know,

(01:12):
for most of us, we don't know about a drug. Obviously,
we see drugs advertised on during sporting events. Seems like
the number one place that they advertise drugs. And then
you pay attention to all the horrible side effects that
come from the drug. But you don't think anything about
a drug until your arm swells up the size of
a grapefruit, or you have searing eye pain, or you

(01:35):
can't see, or your impotent, or your blood pressures through
the roof, and you're gonna die of a stroke. And
so now you need something. And that's when the doctor
prescribes it. And when the doctor prescribes it, you have
no idea what it's going to cost when you go
to pick it up, and that's when you start looking
into you know, how much will your insurance pay for it?

(01:56):
So the article says the foundations and the hospital systems
noted problems and failures with the way the generic drug
market currently operates. When a drug's patent ends, many generic
drug companies enter the market to produce it, driving the
cost down. This can lead to the drug becoming less profitable,

(02:20):
causing manufacturers to leave the market. Eventually, only a single
manufacturer of a generic drug remains, allowing that company to
have a monopoly on the market and to artificially inflate
the price of the drug as much as it wants,
which leaves us with the idea of the patent expiring

(02:42):
and the monopoly expiring. Eventually leads to an end of
the chain monopoly, and the effect for the consumer is
the same product value goes or product cost goes through roof.
So I asked my friend Dennis Calabres, who's worked with
the Arnold Foundation for some time, to help me understand this,

(03:03):
and he said, why don't I get you the guy
who's the expert on it, Dan Lillenquist. He's senior vice
president and chief strategy officer for Inner Mountain Healthcare. He
has an amazing background, which we'll get to in a moment,
but he's the lead architect and board chair of Civica RX,
which is this initiative to create a nonprofit or not
for profit generic drug company. Dan, Yeah, thanks for morning

(03:28):
with us. So explain to us why this is what
need this civica RX is actually filling from the patient
perspective as it relates to pharmaceuticals.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, so, I think you did a nice job setting
that up. Let me just say that when a drug
pass sits patented protected life Meanan, once that formula enters
the public domain and it's available for any manufacturer to make,
it's still there are certain circumstances where that works really
well and the price comes to day down and there
are multiple competitors that stay in the market. But for

(04:04):
some of these smaller drugs where there's you know, where
you don't really only need one or two producers. What
happens over time is the number of manufacturers of that
drug consolidates to one or two as you mentioned, and
you know, if they're the only maker of the drug
and you need that drug and it's a matter of
life or death, they can almost charge you whatever they want.

(04:25):
A great example, it's the one that everybody will know,
is Martin Screlly when he went and took a drug
called drapren that had been on the market for fifty
years and cornered that drug. He raised the price from
you know, seven, you know, thirteen dollars and fifty cents
a pill to seven hundred and fifty dollars a pill,
and the price is still there today. And the problem

(04:48):
is is it's not super attractive for other manufacturers to
come in and make that drug because they know that
Martin Screlly could just collapse the price of the drug,
wipe out their investment if they try to make that drug,
and then just raise the price later because they have
this dominant market position. So what we thought was Civica
RX is you know, if we could get together with
health systems around the country and with philanthropies, we could

(05:12):
create a totally independent, not for profit company that doesn't
require any government intervention to go in and compete for
these markets that have been cornered by folks who are
willing to rip people off. And we did that through
a not for profit structure so that nobody would own it. Essentially,
we're trying to make sure that these drugs remain within

(05:34):
reach of ordinary Americans and we're fighting for these markets.
And that's what the idea is about.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
I have a minute left in this segment. Why doesn't
the free market work in setting a price? Here?

Speaker 2 (05:46):
You know, it's really interesting. It's really hard to get
capital to flow into a market where there's a dominant
monopoly position, and in fact, the money that's flowing into
the market, Michael, is flowing to find opportunities like deraprem
to corner your own market to make money. And so
we just saw that this wasn't repairing itself, so we

(06:06):
thought we'd tried a different structure to get at it.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
And the idea is, so you're a non for profit,
you're not manufacturing the pharmaceuticals, so we are.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Going to be an FDA licensed manufacturer. But what we're
going to do is contract with contract manufacturing underneath this organization.
The not for profit status is we don't want anybody
to own this because the temptation when you compete in
the market is then to jack up the price to
maximize returns for your shareholders. This is that's not what

(06:38):
we're trying to do here. We're trying to make sure
that society at large benefits from what we're doing, rather
than a handful of shareholders.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Dan, can you hold with me for just a moment. Yeah,
all right, I'm going to post this article from the
Houston Business Journal which kind of puts the background in here.
You know, medicine, the healing process or the treatment process
is so odd to me. It's the only thing I
can think of. I mean, if you went to a restaurant,
you ate your meal and at the end they gave
you a bill and you didn't know what it was

(07:06):
going to be twenty bucks or eight hundred bucks, and
especially with pharmaceuticals, that's the way. You have no idea,
you just pay it. It's crazy. All right, we'll talk
to Dan LILNQUI was coming up. Dan Lilan quest for
you an you a Conway twenty fans.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
I don't know him very well, but I was just
listening as great song.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Would you be willing to devote some time I could
kind of do a tutorial and just catch you up
to speed on what there is to know about Conway.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, please do it right now.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Okay, So, Civica RX, this group that John Arnold's foundation
looks like y'all raised. I got thirty million dollars from
three different foundations.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Now actually we've raised So we raised thirty million from
three foundations, but we raised another one hundred and thirty
million from health systems around the country.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
Okay, let's step back from what y'all are doing. I
want you to be king. Let's step back from what
y'all are doing for a moment, because you're trying to
correct what you see as as faults in the market.
Errors in the market, are shortcomings in the market. I'm
going to make you king of healthcare for a moment,
and I know your politics and that you're a free
market guy. Tell me how you fix the problem. Solve

(08:14):
the problem of innovation, because we want companies to engage
in research and development. We want them to have an incentive.
They want them to make money, so they'll go make
these products, but still keeping life saving drugs for high
needs and low income patients available.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
How do you do that well, I mean, so civic
ARX is a start down that road. Listen, the challenge
with innovation is it takes a lot of money to
you to go find a drug, to take it through
the process. That the innovators require a time to get
a repayment for those drugs, and we allow that with

(08:51):
our patented protection protected process, and I support that. I
think we have some of the most innovative companies in
the world working in that space. How they price those drugs.
You know, during the patented time that that's a problem
that that Congress is going to have to address. There's
no way around it. They've got to try to figure

(09:12):
out if they're going to do something, they'd have to
they have to address that directly through legislation. But once
that drug becomes once that formula passes patented protected life
and our feeling is that Civic r X is that
that drug, that formula is owned by the public at
that point, and that we think that the prices should
be fully transparent. A lot of the challenges in the

(09:34):
market with drug pricing is because they hide the ball
on the price. They have all these rebate schemes where
they pay money, you know, back and forth between different companies,
you know, not only just the manufacturers but the distributors
of the drug, and it makes it really difficult for
customers to know what the drug, what the appropriate price is.
So a civic ar X, we've just said, look, we

(09:55):
are going to be one hundred percent transparent on our price.
We're not going to pay rebates, We're not going to
go and try to hide the ball from our customers
or what the price of the product is. And uh.
And so that's a founding principle for Civica and we
expect at the end of the day we make a product,
Civica has the incentive is only to make enough money
to make sure that the company stays viable, but nothing more.

(10:18):
And we've committed to full price transparency and that's where
we think the start needs to happen. By the way,
that needs to happen across the board in healthcare. You know,
so I'm the chief strategy officer of a seven billion
dollars integrated health system in Utah, and we were just
rolling out very transparent pricing here in Utah for for

(10:38):
you know, very common procedures to start that effort here
as well. Just for a long time healthcare in general,
they've we've been able to hide the ball on pricing
and that has to has to turn around, and consumers
deserve to know what what each procedure or what each
service they buy is going to cost beforehand.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
How in the heck did it happen that this industry
re developed and nobody stepped in and said, look, it's
good when you go to a barbecue joint, you go,
brisket is X per pound and ribs are why per pound,
and you choose how much you want to order and
what sides and what drink, and then you pay for
it and you eat your food. It's the only industry

(11:16):
I can think of where you get a bill at
the end. Why has nobody said, we're going to tell
you what you pay before you start.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Well, it goes back to an economic principle. It's when
you are desperate for a service. Look with brisket, when
you look at the price of a brisket, you can
truely choose whether or not to buy it. And by
the way, some of the best brisket in the world
is down there, so I need to come visit you.
But but you look at the price you choose to
buy it. With healthcare, the demand is almost perfectly an elastic,

(11:44):
meaning you're almost willing to pay whatever it takes to
save a life. And that allows I mean, that really
is a challenge for markets because that allows the person
who's setting that price and providing that service to price discriminate,
to kind of figure out how much you're able to
pay and charge you that. And I think part of
the problem with healthcare in general is the intervention of

(12:08):
the government payment schemes as well, because at the end
of the day, the government with the payment with Medicare
and Medicaid, they tag those payment rates based on commercial rates.
So the higher you can move up your commercial payment rate,
the higher you can get paid on Medicare and Medicaid.
And so there's this game that's gone on over the
decades to try to goose up your top line revenue

(12:31):
so that you can maximize the amount of money you
draw down from Medicare and Medicaid, and that's become really
a big problem in the market.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Well, and it seems like there's less price competition. Going
back to what you're doing here with Civica RX, the company,
the not for profit company that the Ronald Foundation gave
this money to. Where is this the money that y'all
are receiving. Is that going towards product development or is
that going to say because you talk about filling the

(13:01):
need for people that can't afford these drugs, So it is.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Not going to subsidies. This is going to right now,
it's going to set up manufacturing that allows Civica to
start manufacturing products, and then we are going to do
that at the lowest price possible so that we make
those available broadly. Here's the dirty little secret with respect
to you know, Martin Screlli's jacking of the price of

(13:25):
that drug. You know, it's still only costs and pennies
a pill to make dreprehim. He's just charging seven hundred
and fifty dollars because he can. So the price that
is in the market has almost no relation to the
underlying manufacturing costs of that drug. And so what civic
our Ex is designed to do is to come in
and actually manufacture those drugs. We'll use contract manufacturing to

(13:46):
help us. But then since we get to set the price,
since we have the FDA license or we'll have the
FDA license, we're going to set a price that is
more appropriate. We think we could take the price of
certain products down by ninety plus percent and then put
them back in reach of their ordinary people, because we're
not trying to maximize returns for shareholders, and so you know,

(14:08):
we expect to take the price down. Our goal is
to make the mission of civicas to make sure that
essential generic medications are available and affordable to everyone. And
so that's where the capital be going, is going to
enter these markets where the price has you know, shot up,
to kind of pop the bubble of that price and
bring it back within reach of regular people.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
Dan, can you hold with us or do you need
to go?

Speaker 2 (14:32):
So I've got to I actually need to go with
no worries.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
I want to talk further. I'm fascinated about what you
guys are doing. Thanks for your time. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Hey, anytime, I'd love to come back on and discuss
us further if you'd like, so, thank you.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
You know, I am fascinated by this subject because at
some point or another, we're all going to need pharmaceutical
products all of us, and the traditional marketplace might pricing mechanism.
How you spur innovation but still make a product that
the market can decide the pricing is it has failed.

(15:07):
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(15:28):
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(15:52):
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(16:15):
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(16:40):
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