David Mitchell, Founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs, Dies at 75

David Mitchell, a public relations executive who founded Patients for Affordable Drugs and became one of the country’s leading voices on lowering prescription drug prices, died on Jan. 2 at his home in Annapolis, Md., his family said. He was 75; the family said the cause was multiple myeloma, a blood cancer he had kept at bay for 15 years.

After a cancer diagnosis in 2010 he set aside plans to retire and used his experience in public relations to press for drug-price reforms. He had a master’s degree in labor relations and a long career as a founding partner of the Washington communications firm GMMB, but listed his primary occupation as “Cancer Patient, November 2010–Present.” By 2016 his medications cost about $300,000 a year; he told Stat in 2017, “It’s like extortion.” In late 2016 he founded Patients for Affordable Drugs to push for price transparency and lower medication costs.

The group recorded tens of thousands of patient interviews, brought patients to hearings and rallies, helped write or influence state price-transparency laws and is widely credited with the inclusion of an annual cap on drug costs in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Under that law, which limited drug costs for Medicare patients to $3,500 a year and eventually to $2,000, his out-of-pocket costs fell from $16,525 to $3,308.

Mitchell was born on May 4, 1950, in Detroit and worked for the United Auto Workers before co-founding GMMB in 1986.

Key Topics

Health, David Mitchell, Gmmb, Inflation Reduction Act, Multiple Myeloma, Medicare