LONDON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a vocal critic of the pharma industry. He’s said it’s corrupted U.S. health agencies and has attacked, often with false arguments, products from vaccines to obesity medications.
So when President-elect Trump, who said Thursday that drug companies have “crushed” Americans, announced RFK Jr. as his pick for health secretary, the industry’s share prices dove.
But at an investor conference Tuesday, pharma executives who were asked about the prospect of an RFK Jr.-led Health and Human Services Department sought to project it was business as usual.
“I’ve been in this industry for 25 years, and it doesn’t matter whether it was Clinton talking about health care and even through when we talked about Obamacare, every administration, there’s been a health care factor,” David Elkins, the chief financial official of Bristol Myers Squibb, said at the Jefferies London Healthcare Conference.
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