Eli Lilly chairman, CEO comments on healthcare reform

WASHINGTON Healthcare reform should include a focus on innovation, the chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly & Co. said in remarks before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Thursday.

John Lechleiter said policymakers’ attention to access, quality and costs should include a focus on innovation, lest results include “unintended side effects,” saying that innovation helped boost the average American’s life expectancy from 47 to 78 over the past century.

“Encouraging innovation needs to be the purpose of U.S. healthcare reform, not its victim,” Lechleiter said in his remarks. “It’s innovation that explains why we are the healthiest, longest-lived and wealthiest human beings ever to occupy the planet.”

According to the CIA World Factbook, the average American has a life expectancy of 79 years, compared with 84 for residents of Macau and about 32 for people in Swaziland.