Senate Approves Alex Azar As New HHS Secretary

January 2018 – On January 24, 2018, the US Senate approved the nomination of former Eli Lilly executive Alex Azar II as the administration’s second HHS secretary. He believes his decade at Eli Lilly, will help him hit the ground running  especially as it pertains to drug pricing.

Azar, who was questioned by the Senate last year about why his company had increased drug prices, says that lowering drug prices is one of his top priorities. He acknowledged that “all drug prices are too high”.  In his testimony before Senate committees, Azar outlined his strategy including expansion the government’s ability to negotiate drug prices, reversing the incentive on list prices, promoting a “robust” competition for both generic and branded drugs, as well as a “viable and robust” biosimilar market, and review the patent process.

Other countries “are not paying their fair share” in developing new medications, according to Azar, and he was generally favored  drug-pricing transparency, with certain caveats. “Transparency is generally very helpful, but we have to be careful around drug pricing to make sure we don’t do anything that could be anti-competitive and counter-productive to what we are trying to do,” Azar said. “We also have to think about what the benefit and the harm would be to the consumer.”

He states that the drug pricing issue is complex, and would typically require a steep learning curve. Azar believes that there is no “silver bullet” to fixing the problem, and that it could be a long-term issue.  “There’s not one action that all of a sudden will fix [high drug prices],” and is open to hearing ideas from others.

Azar served in the agency during George W. Bush’s administration as both the department’s general counsel and deputy secretary. He left Lilly in early 2017 and formed a consulting firm. He told a Senate committee in November 2017 that he no longer owned Lilly stock.