- President Donald Trump's nominee for the country's top health position, Alex Azar, fielded questions from senators on Wednesday.
- Overwhelmingly, the questions centered around the price of prescription drugs, based on Azar's past experience as an executive at the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, a company that makes the diabetes treatment insulin.
- During Azar's
- tenure at Lilly, the price of insulin increased by about 300%.
- "Drug prices are too high. The president has made that clear. So have I," Azar said as part of his opening remarks.
President Donald Trump's pick for Health and Human Services Secretary knows his top priority for the department.
"Drug prices are too high," nominee Alex Azar said in his opening remarks at a Senate hearing Wednesday. "The president has made that clear. So have I."
It's a point senators kept returning to throughout the hearing. As HHS secretary
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- Increasing generic and branded competition.
- Fighting the gaming in the system in which companies use patents to prolong the exclusivity they have before generic drugs reach the market.
- Getting an answer to why Americans are paying more than other countries for prescription drugs. That's a point
On Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul brought up the price of insulin and its history, asking why a drug that's been around in one form or another since the 1920s doesn't have generic competition. (The answer: Unlike chemically-derived drugs like an antibiotic, insulin is made of living cells. That makes the process for making a copy of insulin a bit more difficult.
Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin referenced the finger-pointing that's been going on in the drug industry over drug prices. There are a lot of players involved in the buying and selling of prescription drugs that contribute to patients paying high prices. Drugmakers, for their part, are in charge of setting the initial list price of prescription drugs. She asked what Azar would do about insulin prices if he were head of HHS.
Senators pressed him on his agenda about who he'd be working for: patients or the pharmaceutical industry.
"This is the most important job I will ever have in my lifetime, and my commitment is to the American people, not to an industry," Azar said.