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Springing into MAHA
The FDA banned red dye No. 3, unveiled nutrition labels that prod the food industry to make America healthier, and proposed vastly cutting nicotine levels in cigarettes.
Consumer advocates had been calling on the FDA to ban the dye for years, Lizzy Lawrence and Sarah Todd tell us, and the additive was found to cause cancer in rats more than 30 years ago. HHS Secretary-nominee RFK Jr. has also been critical of the FDA’s slow pace, and he wants to crack down on other additives.
It also took the FDA a while to get around to proposing labels that place easy-to-read information about daily recommended levels of salt, sugar and saturated fat on food packages, Sarah writes.
Lower nicotine levels will not make smokes less toxic, according to Sarah and Lizzy, but research suggests lower levels of the chemical would make them less addictive. Researchers estimate the policy change could prevent 8.5 million tobacco-related deaths by 2100.
Ricks with the fix
Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks was on a live taping of STAT’s biotech podcast, “The Readout LOUD” at the J.P. Morgan conference on Tuesday. Ricks predicted that Lilly will find common cause with the Trump HHS, if HHS Secretary nominee RFK Jr. is serious about making America healthy again.
“If the real goal is like plaintiffs attorneys wanting to sue drug companies for vaccine liability, we have no interest in that,” Ricks said. “We’ll fight tooth and nail on that.”
Ricks also suggested policies for “fixing” Medicare drug price negotiations. Read Mathew Herper and Elaine Chen’s article on Ricks’ proposals.
The business of MAHA is business
Like Ricks, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and he shares Ricks’ optimism for the administration’s Make America Healthy Again platform.
Matt and other reporters attended a lunch with Bourla at JPM. The “extreme left” has played too great of a role in the Biden administration, Bourla said. “They not only hate business, they particularly hate us,” he said.
The Trump administration, on the other hand, favors business.
“They have a very deep belief, across the board, that to make America great again, they need business to be great,” Bourla said.
Too much JPM is never enough
As Trump gets ready to take the reins of the U.S. government, two top officials from his first wild ride in the White House pointed to a range of ways the new administration could reshape key areas of health policy, Jonathan Wosen reports.
Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and former CMS Administrator Seema Verma said the Trump administration could influence vaccine policy, reform PBM business practices, and cut costs in Medicaid and Medicare Advantage.
They got into the weeds at times, especially on vaccination policy. Read the full article here.
Better access for NIH-funded products
The NIH adopted a policy that requires companies to ensure that patients have good access to products based on NIH research, Ed Silverman writes.
Americans have complained for more than a decade that high prices make it difficult to afford drugs, and they can get especially angry when they learn of expensive drugs invented with the help of taxpayer dollars.
Parting blow
Ed also tells us about a Federal Trade Commission report that is very critical of drug middlemen, the second such interim report in less than a year.
The report covers well-trodden ground with a focus on specialty generic drugs.
PBMs generated more than $7.3 billion in revenue by dispensing medicines to treat cancer, HIV, heart disease, and other serious illnesses at prices that exceeded their estimated acquisition costs between 2017 and 2022, according to the report. One Wall Street analyst criticized the report for limiting its study to data on specialty generics, which accounts for 0.9% of the drug market. The FTC said specialty generic drugs represent a large and growing amount of spending by plan sponsors and patients.
What we’re reading
- Federal watchdog raises concerns about the FDA’s accelerated approval program, STAT
- How a company makes millions off a hospital program meant to help the poor, The New York Times
- Medicare director, at JPM conference, gives tips on how to lead the nation’s largest payer, STAT
- Pfizer’s Bourla among corporate execs headed to Trump’s inauguration, WSJ
- Biden administration and Gilead settle long-running battle over patents for HIV PrEP pills, STAT