Worst Health Care Revolving Door Case So Far, Version 2.0? - From President of Lilly USA to US Secretary of Health and Human Services?

DiscussionLast week we noted that Mr Trump famously promised to " drain the swamp " in Washington.  Last week, despite his previous pledges to not appoint lobbyists to powerful positions, he appointed a lobbyist to be acting DHHS Secretary.  This week he is apparently strongly considering Mr Alex Azar, a pharmaceutical executive to be permanent DHHS Secretary, even though the FDA, part of DHHS, has direct regulatory authority over the pharmaceutical industry, and many other DHHS policies strongly affect the pharmaceutical industry.  (By the way, Mr Azar was also in charge of one lobbying effort.) So should Mr Azar be confirmed as Secretary of DHHS, the fox guarding the hen house appears to be a reasonable analogy.Moreover, several serious legal cases involving bad behavior by his company, and multiple other instances of apparently unethical behavior occurred on Mr Azar ' s watch at Eli Lilly.  So the fox might be not the most reputable member of the species.So you know the drill....   The revolving door is a species ofconflict of interest. Worse, some experts have suggested that the revolving door is in fact corruption.  As we notedhere, theexperts from the distinguished European anti-corruption group U4 wrote,The literature makes clear that the revolving door process is a source of valuable political connections for private firms. Butit generates corruption risks and has strong distortionary effects on the economy, especially when this...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Management Tags: crime deception DHHS Donald Trump Eli Lilly legal settlements marketing regulatory capture revolving doors Source Type: blogs