Trump pick vows to take on high drug costs
WASHINGTON — Calling it the opportunity of his lifetime, President Trump’s pick for health secretary pledged Wednesday to help lower drug prices and said he’d carry out the Obama-era health law his boss has been unable to erase.
Alex Azar’s assurances to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee were met with doubt by lawmakers of both parties, especially Democrats concerned about his ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Nonetheless the 50-year-old former drug company and government executive deflected Democratic attempts to paint him as a political partisan beholden to a powerful industry. Some Democrats, including Sens. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, focused their questions on practical policy issues not tinged by ideological conflict.
“I don’t have pharma’s policy agenda,” Azar said at one point. “This is the most important job I will have in a lifetime, and my commitment is to the American people.”
Committee chair Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., told Azar at the conclusion of the hearing that he believes the Senate will vote to confirm him.
Known as a brainy policy expert with a conservative political pedigree, Azar said his main priorities would be lowering drug prices, making health insurance more affordable, continuing Medicare’s efforts to pay for value and not just volume, and confronting the opioid epidemic.
On prescription drug costs, he said his combination of industry and government experience makes him uniquely suited to find solutions. Azar spent a decade as a top executive of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and served in senior positions during a previous stint at the Department of Health and Human Services, which he’d now lead.
That was insufficient for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
“You’ve got some convincing to make me believe you’re going to represent the American people, not Big Pharma,” said Paul.
Paul demanded a written explanation from Azar on why it wouldn’t be safe for U.S. patients to import lowercost prescription drugs from other advanced countries. Drug companies have succeeded in staving off the imports challenge through successive administration of both parties.
Pressed on drug pricing, Azar said all players in the system — drug manufacturers, insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, and government — share some of the blame.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., delivered a blunt appraisal: “Your resume reads like a how-to manual for profiting from government service,” she told Azar, noting the millions he earned at Lilly.