It’s clear that Trump has nominated people that are unhealthy for America. The head of the EPA doesn’t believe climate change is real. The head of the Department of Education doesn’t believe in public education and is okay with working to abolish the Department of Education. Trump has just signed a law saying that states can withhold federal funding from Planned Parenthood, which is obviously not good for half of the country, ya know, all women. Also, of course, Trump wants to ensure that many fewer people are insured by getting rid of the ACA. There are countless other examples that show that Trump is unhealthy for America so it’s no surprise that he would appoint to lead the FDA someone who, despite his new position as the commissioner of the Food & Drug Administration, is less interested in safety and security of our food and pharmaceutical products and more interested in, well, what all his other appointees care about: money.
His name is Scott Gottlieb. He emphasized in his hearing to Congress, a rather short and expedient hearing, that the FDA should “modernize” and focus on “speed” in regards to getting food and drugs approved for distribution throughout America.
He was also asked about the opioid epidemic. While he said in his hearing that it would be a top priority for him, compared it to Ebola and Zika to make him sound more believable, he has, in the past, supported the same opioid drugs getting approved more quickly than they could be evaluated as safe or not safe. He’s been described as a best friend of the pharmaceutical industry. He’s on the Board of GlaxoSmithKline for godsakes. So, it’s pretty clear that he, like Trump’s other nominees and appointees, are saying things that don’t match what they’re doing.
Now, is it possible that Gottlieb could be good for America?
I mean, we could get drugs approved more quickly, and we could ensure that pharmaceutical companies make a profit. That could mean pharmaceutical prices drop because those companies have enough profit such that they could lower prices for consumers and patients. Perhaps they would start producing more medicine in the United States or at least in countries with strong records of caring for the health of their own people. Perhaps this would also lower insurance costs because your premiums would only need to cover the lower cost of prescriptions. Perhaps the speedy approval of such drugs being proliferated throughout the country would be a lower cost to the government that could mean lower taxes for Americans and those doing business here.
Yes, all of these things could happen. HOWEVER, never has a pharmaceutical company lowered its prices because they made a profit the prior year that they could spread throughout the following years of lower-priced drugs. Instead, they often raise prices no matter what. They also try to cut costs even when they don’t need to do so. Like any other corporation, they are trying to raise their earnings per share. For all we know, the reports that they issue regarding pharmaceutical research might be approved or denied by Wall Street before they are available to the general public based on whether it would raise the price of their stock. They could say they have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders not to release reports that show their drugs could hurt you because that could harm sales, which could lower their stock price. My god, investors would be hurt. Oh yeah, I mean, patients and consumer would be hurt, too, but what can they do. Hurt investors’ portfolios of hurt people’s organs? I mean, tough choice, right? C’mon.
By the way, I don’t consider patients to be consumers because their consumption of medicine is not voluntary, no matter how much or how little it costs…you might say I view medicine as a utility that isn’t something we should have to work for.
So, it’s clear that pharmaceutical companies like Scott Gottlieb and that he likes them. It’s clear that he’s making the same statements about modernization, a ‘new era’ and being more ‘efficient.’ They all say the same thing. They think it sounds good. They think we’re upset about them not accomplishing their goals more quickly. They think that’s what we’re upset about. They think we want them to work harder and leaner so they can lower prices. They think we want them to lower their own costs so that they could lower our costs. HOWEVER, we don’t want that. We want them to care about us, and whatever that looks like is fine with us. We want them to care. It’s call healthCARE for a reason.
I do have a friend who works for the FDA, and she said that she spends half of her time in a postdoctoral position at the FDA, after having received a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, helping pharmaceutical companies figure out how to get approved more quickly. In other words, they have people on the inside that are actually helping companies get their products onto the market more quickly. That doesn’t sound like an independent organization meant to be a check on the pharmaceutical industry. That sounds more like the pharmaceutical industry is running the FDA.
What we need to do is protest against these companies. What we need to do is buy all our pharmaceutical products from one of them so that its competitors fail. If we can narrow it down to one, prices will rise because they have no competition, but Congress, even Republicans who care about competition and the laws of economics, will notice. Republicans will think there’s no competition because consolidation and lack of competitiveness has created monopolistic conditions, and Democrats will show that there needs to be more regulation against whichever giant is the only one around. It might be a duopoly. It could be three. But when we have consolidated all the power into one company, then we can highly regulate it. Republicans think that there’s no need to regulate because, if they want consumers to buy their products, they’ll self-regulate because, otherwise, no one will trust them. However, nowadays, they don’t need our trust. They need our captivity. If we have to buy from them no matter what we feel, then they know it doesn’t matter how much we protest. However, even Republicans don’t like it when only one or two companies control the market.
Now, Trump has the idea of erasing the lines that prevent insurance companies from competing. If that helps pharmaceutical companies as well, this may speed up the consolidation process. We’ve seen this with the internet service providers. The Internet is now a utility because the government, because Obama, stepped in. Perhaps we can get this to happen with prescription and other drugs, as well, because, as that link to the NY Times states, the internet is not a luxury but a utility, and perhaps our government can see that healthcare is also a utility and not just a luxury for the rich. However, we don’t need to wait for economics to run its course or for Trump to do something that might help his pharmaceutical friends and then inadvertently hurt them in the long run. We can, in fact, push this consolidation forward. This is not a situation where we can vote with our wallets by NOT buying from certain companies but where we can vote with our wallets by picking only one company, perhaps the lesser of however many evils are out there. This will hurt the revenue of the others, force them to consolidate, which will force the DOJ to get involved, etc. etc.
We’ve seen this with the airline industry, as well. There are so few airlines. There used to be so many. The government decentralized the industry, let them do whatever they wanted and watched as market forces changed the way they operated. They watched as Delta bought Northwest, and then the DOJ started getting involved. Nowe we have very few airlines and they nearly monopolize hubs and routes. They’ve even been caught colluding with one another, making deals to stop competing along certain routes so that everyone can keep prices high. However, the government is now getting involved. They are getting involved in a very small and largely ineffective way, but one more merger and it’ll be clear to them that there’s so much consumer pressure that it’s going to hurt their chances of reelection if they don’t help airline customers fight back against the airlines.
The same can happen in the pharmaceutical industry. We have the power to make this happen. We’re in a position where we have to understand where we are in order to get where we want to go.