Trump’s pick for health secretary makes clear he’s totally the wrong guy for the job

By David Lazarus. January 12, 2018. Los Angeles Times.

 

Excerpts only. Read complete article here. 

 

Watching Alex Azar, President Trump’s nominee for health secretary, testify before the Senate Finance Committee this week, I realized he’s more impressive than I’d previously thought.

Unlike Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Azar isn’t alarmingly ignorant about the department he’d run. Unlike Scott Pruitt, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he’s apparently not determined to tear down the very things he’s supposed to safeguard.

But Azar is still the wrong guy for the job.

. . .

The problem with Azar isn’t his smarts. It’s the fact that he’s coming from a gig as head of U.S. operations for Indianapolis drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co., making him a likely advocate for the pharmaceutical industry rather than patients.

The problem with Azar is that earlier in his career, he landed a plum job at HHS after being active in former President George W. Bush’s campaign. Then, after gaining some healthcare regulatory experience, he jumped ship to become a drug-industry lobbyist.

The problem with Azar is that if your goal is to drain the swamp, this guy’s the friggin’ Creature from the Black Lagoon.

. . .

By all indications, Azar isn’t about to bite the drug industry that fed him. Limiting how much drug companies can charge for meds — a common practice in other developed countries — is such a non-starter for the free-market-minded United States that Azar wasn’t even asked about such a possibility.

On the other hand, he was asked by Democratic lawmakers if he’d be open to allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies on behalf of the program’s 44 million beneficiaries. This is also how government-run health plans in other developed countries keep drug prices down.

. . .

Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program, said Azar knows full well that drug companies routinely jack up prices for new medicines so that, even after insurers negotiate, patients are routinely gouged at the drugstore.

“The country’s top health official must count standing up to this corporate abuse a top priority of the job,” he said. “That is what most Americans want.”

What the Trump administration wants, though, is yet another businessman approaching public service as a for-profit endeavor.

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