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"How Pharma Lost Its Edge in Washington"
Rob Smith was quoted in Cynthia Koons and Anna Edney's Bloomberg article, "How Pharma Lost Its Edge in Washington," published on February 25, 2019.
The article reads:
Preventing price controls is in the interest of the entire industry, but once the conversation becomes not whether but how to control drug prices, drugmakers’ competing interests take hold. They can’t avoid the conversation anymore, says Rob Smith, an analyst at Capital Alpha Partners in Washington. “They realize they have to put something on the table.”
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Alex Azar, Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services, has made it clear that he and the president want lower costs for patients across the board, but that any solution must include lower drug prices. “You have a Congress that is committed to drug pricing reforms,” says Smith, the analyst. “You have a president that has made no bones about his disdain for pharma and their pricing practices.” And you have Azar, who was once a president of drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co.’s U.S. affiliate, but “knows that his job performance is being measured based on his ability to make some of these changes Trump wants.”
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-25/how-pharma-lost-its-edge-in-washington
