- President Donald Trump has said that Alex Azar, his pick for Health and Human Services secretary, will "be a star for better healthcare and lower drug prices."
- Some senators are using Azar's experience in the pharmaceutical industry to argue otherwise.
- In particular, Azar was a senior executive at Lilly during a time when the price of insulin steadily increased.
- Insulin prices rose three-fold during the period he was there, including when he served as president of the company, even though the medicine remained the same.
ADVERTISEMENT
Democrats are going after Trump's pick to replace Tom Price and using his history overseeing drug prices hikes to do it
Some senators aren't convinced that Azar, who has been an executive at the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, will be interested in lowering drug prices.
ADVERTISEMENT
Recommended articles
Alex Azar, the new nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, is being pitched as someone who will help lower the price of prescription drugs. "He will be a star for better healthcare and lower drug prices," President Donald Trump said in a tweet announcing Azar as his pick on Monday. Trump, who once said that drugmakers are "getting away with murder," has promised to get rising drug prices under control. But Azar's own track record with drug prices is giving Democrats fodder to attack the choice. Even though he's already served in the department that he's now being tapped to run, Azar was also a senior executive atEli Lilly. Lilly is one of three companies that have substantially increased the price of insulin, the lifesaving drug used to treat diabetes. Some of those increases came while Azar was president of the company's US unit.The opposition was quick to point this out:
Red flag. While an executiv... @ Kirsten Gillibrand
If my priority were bringin... @ Senator Jeff Merkley
ADVERTISEMENT
Trump was clearly never ser... @ Bernie Sanders
Decade of price hikes
Azar worked as HHS deputy secretary from 2005 to 2007 under President George W. Bush.
In 2007, he joined the drugmaker Eli Lilly as a senior vice president of corporate affairs and communications and eventually became president of Lilly USA,according to his LinkedIn profile. He left Lilly in January this year and has since consulted with pharmaceutical and health-insurance companies. Lilly did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Azar's time at the company.
Over the 10-year period when Azar was at Lilly, the price of insulin notched a three-fold increase. It wasn't just Lilly's insulin product, called Humalog. The price of a rival made by Novo Nordisk has also climbed, with the two rising in such lockstep that you can barely see both trend lines below. The gains came despite the fact that the insulin, which as a medication has an almost-century-long history, hasn't really changed since it was first approved.
ADVERTISEMENT
What Azar might do about drug costs
It's likely that should Azar try to do something about drug prices, he might look at taking action against more than just pharmaceutical companies. Instead, he may target the middlemen who many drugmakers blame for jacking up prices. Lilly, for example, says that that thenet price for its insulin Humalogwas actually down 24% in the third-quarter of 2016, from the third-quarter of 2015 — because of the complicated system of payments. Azar's spoken out about this before:
"We're trying to usher in a golden age of medicines with a payment system that is in its golden years," Azar said at a Manhattan Institute event in 2016, Bloomberg reported. "That system needs to be retired and replaced. The only way to do that is for every private health care institution, drug companies, insurers, employers, PBMs, hospitals, to work together to create a better way to pay for medicines."
FOLLOW BUSINESS INSIDER AFRICA
ADVERTISEMENT
Recommended articles
The global workforce is set to collapse without Africa
500 millionaires fall off in Kenya - here’s why
Top 10 African countries with the most centi-millionaires in 2024
7 most influential Africans in the world 2024 -TIME
5 African countries with the least expensive freelancers
African billionaires are fleeing their home continent amidst economic downturn
Fear of a new epidemic pushes President Putin to collaborate with Africa
Nigerian chess master to begin 58-hour Guinness World Record attempt at Times Square today
