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Most of us Americans have firsthand experience with the broken state of the U.S. prescription drug market. In March, our son said his ADHD medication wasnt working anymore. We set up an appointment with his pediatrician, which is when the Kafka-esque insurance wrangling began. The doctor prescribed a medication listed on our insurers published formulary (the list of prescription drugs, whether brand name or generic, covered by its policies). The insurer denied the prescription, then denied the prior authorization our pediatrician submitted. Then we learned the published formulary was incorrect. We got a copy of the correct formulary and tried again. We had to call around to find a pharmacy that had the new drug in the generic form (since the name brand isnt covered), only to have the prescription denied again. Rx Frustration Redux The insurer told our doctor that a prior authorization was required, even though this medication is on the preferred formulary, so the pediatrician dutifully submitted that paperwork. Several days later, this prior authorization was also denied. The pediatricians nurse practitioner called the insurer, threw a bit of a fit, and got the insurance company to follow its own rules. I picked up the medicine that same day. But despite the drug being listed in the formulary as costing $21 with insurance, I was charged $215because our son has not yet met his $3,300 annual deductible. The cherry on top of this sundae of frustration is that the new medication doesnt seem to be working as hopedso were going to have to go through all this again with another drug. I know our situation is far from unique. But how did we get here? Why do insurance companies have so much power over our prescription drug choices and costs? And considering Trumps May 12th executive order to lower prescription drugs costs, is it possible that there may be some relief on the horizon? Heres what contributes to the dystopia that is American prescription drug prices, and what we can expect from the current administrations plans to improve the situation. Why do prescription drugs cost us so dang much? The press conference where Trump announced the executive order to lower prescription drug costs was plagued by his usual word saladwith a side of weird fat-shaming. But the verbal weaver-in-chief did at least make one valid point: Americans pay a lot more for the same drugs compared to citizens of other countries. There are a number of potential reasons for this cost disparity, none of which are within an individual consumers control: Research and development Pharmaceutical companies like to point to the high cost of research and development as the main driving force behind the high cost of prescription drugs in America. And to be fair to Eli Lilly et al. (which is not a phrase that I often type), the pharmaceutical industry spent $83 billion on R&D in 2019 alone, which is more than 10 times the amount spent per year in the 1980s, adjusted for inflation. But even with that staggering cost of R&D, thats not the reason Americans are rationing their lifesaving medicine. The Journal of the American Medical Association found in 2022 that there is no connection between the amount of money a drug company spends on developing a medication and the price of that medication. Profit motives Though the top executives will deny this until theyre blue in the face, its hard to ignore the fact that pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars per yearand can even measure their profits in hundreds of dollars per second. Drug companies can set their own prices for medically necessary drugs, and they are abetted by an opaque, inconsistent, and bureaucratic employer-sponsored insurance system. This allows big pharma to (allegedly) determine drug prices based on profit motive rather than health outcomes. Direct-to-consumer advertising In 1997, the FDA relaxed the rules for pharmaceutical broadcast advertising, making it possible to advertise prescription medications directly to consumers on TV and radio. Drug companies embraced the opportunity wholeheartedly, spending about $1.3 billion on direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads in 1997, and that number soared to $8.1 billion in 2022. Pharmaceutical companies claim that DTC advertising helps inform consumers about health conditions and medical treatments. Im old enough to remember when direct-to-consumer prescription drug commercials first appeared. The ads seemed dubious to teenage me, since every commercial spot convinced me I needed Claritin, despite having no seasonal allergies. Many consumer advocates and medical professionals worry that consumers are similarly influenced to request unnecessary medication, which increases the cost of care. Those increased costs appear to be the rationale behind the huge investment pharmaceutical companies put into DTC ads. The industry wouldnt shell out more than $8 billion per year for the altruistic goal of keeping patients well-informed. Its a for-profit industry, after all. Pharmacy benefit managers Pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) is the health industry role youve never heard of thats behind the rage-inducing price of your blood pressure medicine. The PBM is a third-party contractor that negotiates drug prices between the pharmaceutical company, the insurer, and the pharmacy. Its the PBM that created the formulary we consulted while trying to get my sons prescription (and it was probably the PBM that failed to update the formulary, which added three weeks to our hyperactive goose chase). Additionally, the PBM decides which medications are preferred, which are not covered, and how much patients will pay for them before and after meeting the deductible. On the other side of the equation, the PBM negotiates discounts or rebates for the insurance companies from the drug manufacturers and determines how much the pharmacies will get paid by the insurers. Unfortunately, the PBM can keep a portion of the discount or rebate they negotiate, as well as some of the money they receive from the insurer for the pharmacyand none of their fees or incentives are transparent. These go-betweens are incentivized to increase prices for everyone to line their own pockets and their involvement is not a line item in your drug price. Insurer cost sharing Big Pharma doesnt carry all of the blame for high drug costs. Insurance is also a usual suspect. Many insurance companies have shifted more of their costs onto patients in recent years via higher premiums, copays, and deductibles. In our case, all three of those insurance costs have gone up in the past few years. Meaning we will be paying over $200 for our sons monthly medication unless he reaches his $3,300 annual deductibleHa Shem forbid. Trump to the rescue . . .? Like a broken clock occasionally telling time, our fearful leader has bumbled into identifying a real problem. Americans are spending way too much money on prescription drugs and its easy to see that citizens of other countries dont have this issue. So what exactly does the May 12th executive order say, and will it bring relief to patients who just want reasonable drug prices? Whats in the executive order The specific plan outlined in the so-called Delivering Most-Favored Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients executive order is classic Trump, overpromising a bright and beautiful improvement with an unclear method of execution. The order directs the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to negotiate with pharmaceutical manufacturers to set lower drug prices by mid-June. If that doesnt happen, Secretary Bear Carcass will create a new rule tying U.S. drug prices to prices paid by patients in other countries. And thats it. Thats all the executive has ordered. Prices arent going down anytime soon Unfortunately, other than threatening to take the CEOs of Merck, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson to RFK Jrs favorite swimming hole, theres not much Trump can do to get the pharma companies to agree to lower prices. As of right now, the administration seems to mainly be asking the drug manufacturers to pretty please lower their prices. Im not holding my breath. (Well, except around certain cabinet members.) Complex, infuriating, and ubiquitous Theres no bright side to the dystopian reality were living in, where a pencil-pusher in another state gets to decide on my kids medical care and Im still coughing up a couple of Benjamins every month for medicine that doesnt work. And even when our leaders correctly identify this as a problem, they dont have real solutions, because the issue is so big, entrenched, and difficult to solve. That doesnt mean theres no hope for us little folk. Whether its your kids nurse practitioner giving your insurance company a piece of her mind, your pharmacist finding you money-saving coupons, your doctor calling colleagues to get you as many samples as possible, or just a fellow patient listening sympathetically, the American healthcare system is still full of compassionate people supporting each other through this crap.
Category:
E-Commerce
Last week, the nonprofit that runs New York City Pride revealed that around a quarter of its corporate donors have either canceled or diminished their support this year. The pullback has result in an estimated $750,000 shortfall for the organization as it gears up for its biggest event of the year. According to Chris Piedmont, media director at Heritage of Pride, many sponsors cited uncertainty around the economic impact of tariffs as their reasoning for scaling back. Others, though, expressed concern about potential blowback from the current administration for publicly supporting Pride and other [DEI] initiatives. Its a troubling new chapter in a months-long trend of companies that once championedand, in some cases, profited off ofDEI initiatives, which are now quietly diminishing their support. The drop in corporate sponsorship isnt isolated to New York City; its happening across the country, from San Francisco to St. Louis, Missouri, to St. Petersburg, Florida. Joanna Schwartz is a professor at Georgia College & State University with a specialty in LGBTQ+ marketing. She says that, while there has been more caution around this marketing in the last few years, the current political climate has made companies especially fearful of the backlash that might come with supporting the queer community. Amid this climate of capitulation, Schwartz says its more valuable than ever for companies who truly hold LGBTQ+ support as a core value to stand by the community rather than abandoning it. Pride celebrations losing sponsorship dollars In a press release sent to supporters last week, Heritage of Pride said NYC Pride is hoping to raise $25,000 before June 30 to account for its funding gap. While the number of partners supporting the event has actually increased from 70 last year to 76 this year, overall investment has taken a drastic hit. Spokesperson Kevin Kilbride told the New York Times that PepsiCo, Skyy Vodka, Target, Nissan, and Mastercard are some of the brands that either backed out, reduced their contributions, or asked for their involvement to go unpublicized. In a statement to Fast Company, Nissan said it “is currently reviewing all marketing and sales spendingincluding select consumer auto shows, sports properties and other entertainment activationsto maximize both efficiency and breakthrough effectiveness.” LOreal is the only brand returning from 2024 as a platinum sponsor, contributing $175,000 to NYC Pride. Meanwhile, small, local, and queer-owned businesseslike Brooklyn Brewery, Mischief Mates, Radiant Light Candles, and the Travel Agencyhave stepped up in the absence of larger corporate sponsors. Still, the organization is in a challenging place as it looks to stage a successful Pride this year. Per the release, a 25% budget gap could mean fewer floats and performers, a loss in grant programs that aid queer New Yorkers, and difficulty hiring security teams. These are concerns that have been echoed across the U.S. In St. Louis, Anheuser-Busch, a key sponsor of PrideFest for over 30 years, didn’t renew its sponsorship in 2025. After other sponsors also pulled back, the organization was left with a $150,000 deficit. San Francisco Pride organizers told Bloomberg in late April that their event is down nearly $200,000 this year after Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, Benefit Cosmetics, and the liquor brand Diageo dropped their sponsorships. And Twin Cities Pride reported a similar financial shortfall as it waited to hear back from around 30 former sponsors. In small towns, the impact is felt even more acutely. Eve Keller, co-president of USA Prides, a national network of LGBTQ Pride organizers, told NBC News that some smaller, rural Prides have reported sponsorships declining 70% to 90% compared to the average year. Piedmont says its been beyond disheartening to watch corporations bow to public pressure at a time when the queer community, and especially trans individuals, are under attack now more than ever. Last week, House Republicans passed a budget bill that a bill that would cut off Medicaid funding for all gender transition care. Experts have called it “an assault” on transgender healthcare. (The bill still has to go to the Senate.) We need corporations and partners of all sizes to step up to the plate, stay on the right side of history and support the entire LGBTQIA+ community, Piedmont says. We’re here. We’re queer. And we’re not going anywhere. Regardless, our community will do what it has always donefrom Stonewall, to Compton’s Cafeteria, to the youth-led trans protests todaywe march on. Since last week’s news of Heritage of Pride’s budget shortfall, Piedmont says the organization has received nearly $10,000 from almost 100 different donors. A troubling chapter in a larger trend of capitulation The retreat of companies like Nissan and Anheuser-Busch, who once served as major Pride sponsors across the U.S., follows a more troubling trend. As the Trump administration pushes to codify its extreme views, brands including Tractor Supply Co., John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Ford, and Lowes have walked back DEI efforts. Pride parades have typically been a relatively inexpensive opportunity for companies to demonstrate support for their LGBTQ+ employees while hitting a very targeted audience, Schwartz says. But in the current political environment, companies are being far more careful about being connected to support for the community because theres a growing backlash calling attention to corporate efforts at inclusivity, particularly of LGBTQ+ people generally, and trans and nonbinary people in particular. This is striking, Schwartz says, in that it feels like a regression to an era when corporate support for the queer community was almost nowhere to be found. When Pride first started out, it was a kind of grassroots way to acknowledge and celebrate Stonewall. Only in the last decade or so have companies become more willing to openly sponsor queer eventsso much so, in fact, that NYC Pride has previously faced criticism for transforming from a community-focused event into a “corporate party.” Part of the benefit of sponsorship isn’t just advertising to the LGBT community, but also showing support for your LGBT employees, so it builds community within organizations, Schwartz says. Up until the last couple of years, companies were being more and more supportive of the LGBT community and, to be perfectly frank about it, also profiting off of that, which gets into rainbow capitalism. Rainbow capitalism, or rainbow washing, generally refers to a company’s outward support of the queer community, while not truly backing up LGBTQ+ customers or employees behind the scenes. The perception of rainbow washing is one of the reasons why Target, which spent years promoting Pride Month collections, is facing major financial backlash for its retreat from Pride and DEI efforts at large. Financially speaking, there was a good reason for companies to embrace the queer community: According to a 2023 study by the investment adviser LGBT Capital, LGBTQ+ people hold an estimated $3.9 trillion in global purchasing power. “You don’t want to let that part of the community think you just don’t care about it, but unlike every other sub-population in the United States, that’s the one target that, if you advertise to it, you potentially lose other customers,” Schwartz says. Anheuser-Busch subsidiary Bud Light experienced a similar problem in 2023. After the company released a small ad campaign featuring trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, conservative critics spread transphobic rhetoric and advocated boycotting the brand. Bud Light shrank away from critics rather than facing them head-on, in turn alienating its queer customers. In 2023 alone, Bud Light lost an estimated $1.4 billion in U.S. beer sales as both conservatives and LGBTQ+ advocates spoke out against it. Currently, some companies are publicly retreating from DEI initiatives while still maintaining behind-the-scenes initiatives, like support for LGBTQ+ employee resource groups. Schwartz says she’s also noticed a trend of companies being much more careful about how they support the queer community, like avoiding any overt reference to trans or non-binary people, in order to avoid becoming “targets” of conservative media or the Trump administration. She believes this overarching fear is the main reason that many companies are backing out of Pride celebrations this year. “They’re saying, ‘There’s shifting corporate alignment, and we’re looking at our advertising budgets.’ All of that is just a polite way of a company saying, ‘We’re too scared to do this, and we don’t want to own it because we also don’t want to disenfranchise the LGBT community,'” Schwartz says. For many LGBTQ+ community members, theres a feeling that some companies only offered their support when it was convenient, and are retracting it now that the optics are no longer as beneficial. On Reddit, dozens of users are collating lists of companies deemed “fair weather friends” for their recent backtracking. The [queer] community has been completely abandoned by a number of major companies, across a lot of brand categories, Schwartz says. The current prevailing wind is out of a far more conservative place, and companies are trying not to make anyone mad, but the companies that were really trying to make an easy buck off of the community were the first ones to leave. In that way, there is a little bit more of a purity with the companies that have stuck around.
Category:
E-Commerce
As millions of new graduates enter the job market this spring and summer, many may encounter a potentially frustrating paradox: They need experience to get hired, but they need a job or internship to gain that experience.This paradox is deepening in todays labor market. At Deloitte, we recently released a Global Human Capital Trends report that found that 66% of hiring managers say most recent hires are not fully prepared for their roles, most often due to a lack of experience. Meanwhile, research has shown that a majority of employers have increased experience requirements over the past three years, and many entry-level roles today often require two to five years of prior experience.This can present a virtually impossible situation for young talent. Foot-hold jobs, especially those traditional entry-level roles where workers could grow into an organization, are becoming increasingly hard to find. If organizations want to build sustainable talent pipelines and develop tomorrows leaders, they should rethink what it means to be ready for work and how they help people get there. The Disappearing Entry-Level Job For years, work has been trending towards greater complexity and specialization. It demands judgment, creativity, and adaptabilityenduring human capabilities that are hard to acquire without hands-on experience. AI and automation amplify the issue, consuming many of the routine, repeatable tasks that once formed the core of entry-level roles.Simultaneously, some organizations are flattening their structures to increase agility. But this can have unintended consequences, as they may potentially risk eliminating stepping-stone roles and informal mentorship channels that can help early-career workers grow.This erosion of early-career development doesnt just affect individuals. It could threaten future leadership pipelines and innovation capacity. Thats why organizations need to take action now to close the growing experience gap among tomorrows business leaders. Experience Readiness We need to challenge the assumption that experience or degrees automatically equate to job readiness. They often dont. Human capabilities like empathy, curiosity, and problem-solving are more predictive of success than a bullet point on a résumé. In the AI age, human capabilities are tested just as much as hard skills. Nurturing these capabilities is incredibly important for creating leaders with the resilience and problem-solving skills for any challenge. In 2025, modern workforce development modelslike what we have at Deloitteemphasize three factors: technical skills (such as coding or accounting), human capabilities (such as critical thinking and emotional intelligence), and potential (including adjacent skills or latent abilities that can be nurtured). Yet, hiring systems often filter out high-potential candidates who dont meet what can sometimes be arbitrary experience thresholds. That means career changers, first-generation graduates, or self-taught professionals often struggle to get noticed. Strategies to Close the Experience Gap Fixing the experience gap requires systemic change, from hiring criteria to day-to-day development.1. Adopt Skills-First Hiring and Whole-Person Models: Move beyond degree and tenure filters. Focus on demonstrated skills, motivation, and learning agility. This approach opens doors to candidates who may not follow traditional paths but are ready to grow.2. Invest in Internships and Modern Apprenticeships: Paid internships and apprenticeships offer the context-rich experience grads need to develop. Research from Burning Glass Institute and Strada Education Foundation shows these programs not only reduce underemployment but also improve long-term retention.Theres an unmet demand for these programs, too, as Deloittes Workplace Skills Survey revealed that 57% of employees want more on-the-job observation and shadowing opportunities. Moreover, 61% of workers value mentorship programs as an effective way to build workplace relationships, emphasizing the importance of fostering connections alongside structured development initiatives. 3. Use AI to Accelerate, Not Replace, Early Career Development: AI can simulate on-the-job experience in safe, low-risk environments. Digital playgrounds allow early-career employees to test their decision-making and receive feedback. AI tools can: Prompt reflection with critical questions Synthesize knowledge from experienced colleagues Help users practice judgment via realistic scenarios, including answering client questions during mock presentations When used intentionally, AI becomes an acceleratornot a displacerof new talent development.4. Create Micro-Opportunities for Experiential Learning: Organizations should make it easier for employees to gain experience through short-term projects. Talent marketplaces, internal gig platforms, and simulations allow early-career employees to try new challenges and build confidence incrementally.5. Empower Managers to Develop Talent: Managers still control hiring filters, but theyre often overwhelmed. Deloittes 2025 Human Capital Trends Report shows managers spend just 13% of their time on tasks like hiring and onboarding. And 36% say they arent well prepared to manage people.That has to change. Managers need training and bandwidth to mentor early-career employees. With around 40% of their time dedicated to administrative work or problem-solving, most managers simply lack the time to be the mentors most junior staff need. Formal mentorship, real-time feedback, and inclusive leadership practices help new hires grow and turn potential into performance. From Experience Gaps to Opportunity Gateways The potential risks of inaction are clear: persistent underemployment, shrinking leadership pipelines, and a projected global shortfall of 85 million skilled workers by 2030. These arent future concerns; theyre already weakening competitiveness today.Gen Z, however, is ready. Deloittes 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey shows nearly a third plan to leave their employers within two years, not from disloyalty, but in pursuit of growth, stability, and purpose. Theyre reskilling on their own and eager to contribute. Its time to redefine readinessnot as tenure or credentialsbut as the potentialand agility that comes from well-honed human capabilities. Its time to treat AI and access to apprenticeships as launchpads for early career professionals, not barriers to their ability to gain the experience they need. And its time to equip managers to be talent builders, not just task owners.The class of 2025 doesnt lack talent, but they do often lack access. Its time for organizations to stop asking Wheres the experience? and start creating it.
Category:
E-Commerce
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