Policy

A week after dining with Trump and his team at Mar-a-Lago, leaders at Pfizer and Eli Lilly have publicly stated that they intend to collaborate with the incoming administration on key issues affecting the pharma industry.

The EPIC Act has been proposed with bipartisan and industry support to give small molecule drugs the same protection against price negotiation as biologics, but concerns over how to balance the federal budget could prevent a short-term fix to the IRA.

Based on how President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration handled immigration, experts are concerned about how his second term will impact foreign-born biopharma professionals. Two immigration attorneys discuss what may be ahead, including increased difficulty getting work visas.

Trump is rounding out his health cabinet with another controversial figure: one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for herd immunity through infection during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Career conservative and former congressman Dave Weldon will, if confirmed, act as director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, where his anti-vaccine views will mesh with those of selected Department of Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Makary is a pancreatic surgeon at Johns Hopkins who became known for battling medical mistakes and in recent years has been an outspoken critic of COVID-19 policies.

The selection of controversial TV personality Mehmet Oz to run the agency overseeing Medicare and Medicaid follows Trump’s pick of RFK Jr. to run its parent department, HHS.

Trump fingers Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the HHS, lupus and ATTR-CM dominate headlines this week, bluebird bio has a cash gap to leap and RegenxBio eyes Sarepta in Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Trump’s HHS pick, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is an anti-vaccine campaigner who has previously said that he plans to gut the FDA on allegations of corruption and reduce the NIH’s headcount.

Suggestions that the U.S. should emulate other countries on drug price controls or patents obscure how our present policies have allowed drug development to flourish.