Yesterday morning, November 29th, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee held its confirmation hearing on the nomination of Alex Azar to be the next Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. The previous secretary, Tom Price, resigned after reporters discovered he was using taxpayer dollars to fund his traveling in private jets. We have previously written about Alex Azar and how he should take sweeping action to lower drug prices. Y

This week President Trump announced his nomination of Alex Azar, a former pharmaceutical company executive, to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. Mr. Azar is also a lawyer and health care expert who has a thorough knowledge of the federal government and served as a health official in the George W. Bush administration, which bodes well. However, he has also been lukewarm on reducing drug prices, and we hope that he will adopt a more aggressive stance. For ten

Earlier this year, North Dakota passed two laws to regulated pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and curb their abuses. The laws were S.B. 2258, which protects pharmacies from hidden charges and clawbacks and prevents PBMs from charging patients co-pays that exceed the cost of their medication, and S.B 2301, which requires PBMs to provide more transparency for their clients, to disclose if they practice spread pricing, and to agree to fair competition. Last week, on Tuesday, Nov

Yesterday evening Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), one of the Senate's leading champions of reducing prescription drug prices, delivered an important speech on the Senate floor. In this speech, she criticizes President Trump's nomination of Alex Azar to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, and urges that Congress swiftly take action to bring drug costs down. Senator Klobuchar points out that Mr. Azar is a former drug company executive for Eli Lilly, one of three c

The citizen petition process is provided by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to raise legitimate safety concerns about prescription drugs. At its best, it is an outlet for ordinary people to make their voices heard and to point out problems with proposed medicines. But the process is currently being grossly abused. Yesterday, at a Federal Trade Commission workshop on competition and prescription drug markets, Professor Michael Carrier pointed out the manipulation of thi

In a recent segment, John Oliver looked at antitrust enforcement, and specifically at competition in the eyewear industry. He points out that big businesses are getting even bigger, there has been a record amount of corporate consolidation, and this is making products worse and harming ordinary Americans. Mergers and acquisitions are negatively affecting consumers, stifling competition, and making it difficult for new businesses to get started. For example, four airlines now