Here are five quotes from Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky on where the company's medical device and healthcare businesses are headed, based on his statement during the fourth quarter 2017 conference call as transcribed by Seeking Alpha:
1. Where healthcare innovation is headed: "I believe that to drive the change in the healthcare space that people want and need, we must have a sense of urgency. This requires us to actually re-imagine Johnson & Johnson as a 132-year-old startup, one that embraces and acts on the best ideas, that is nimble and fast, that leverages technology to drive life-changing and life-saving innovation and one that focuses on being competitive always via transformative products, quality services and transparent pricing, all with the consumer top-of-mind."
2. Healthcare spending: "The pharmaceutical spending is one widely discussed component [that] accounts for about 14 percent of the overall healthcare spend in the U.S. As such, it's important to be clear on how we view our responsibility for the patients and stakeholders served by our products. We believe that investing in innovation to focus on unmet medical needs that create differentiated products to ultimately help people live longer, healthier and happier lives is our first responsibility."
3. Value-based care: "We have entered into a number of value-based contracts and we continue to explore new opportunities such as outcomes-based contracts, which are tied to clinical endpoints as well as contracts that share risk with managed care organizations and contracts tied to offset other healthcare expenditures. We are also committed to responsible pricing."
4. Healthcare legislation: "To be clear, we support bipartisan steps that will expand access to affordable healthcare and improve long-term sustainability of the U.S. healthcare system while fostering a competitive market and incentivizing R&D investments behind new treatments, innovations and cures. From our view, there are several areas for possible bipartisan agreement, some of which include the continued funding of cost sharing reduction payments, strengthening the insurance risk pool and allowing state flexibility."
5. Corporate tax rate: "Changes to corporate tax rates will help improve the overall competitiveness of U.S. companies. The tax modernization efforts move the U.S. closer to a territorial system and we believe that is good for the economy."