Word: waxman
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...Generic Nudge The question before Waxman's committee last summer was this: How many years of monopoly protection should be afforded to biotechnology drugs, known as biologics, before cheaper alternatives are allowed on the market? These miraculous drugs - which differ from traditional, chemical-based pharmaceuticals because they are derived from living matter - are widely regarded as the future of the pharmaceutical industry and, indeed, of medicine itself. While only 20% of drugs on the market today are biologics, it is expected that, with 633 biotechnology medicines in development last year for more than 100 diseases, half the new drugs approved...
...policymakers look for ways to control health-care costs, the price of biologics is drawing more and more scrutiny. The obvious model for bringing in competition is a 1984 law that Waxman wrote with Republican Senator Orrin Hatch. It lowered the regulatory obstacles that prevented generic drugs from making their way to market. At the time, it was expected that fast-tracking the approval of "bioequivalent" drugs would bring down medical costs by $1 billion a year. But with generics now accounting for more than 70% of prescriptions dispensed in the U.S., "the actual savings have exceeded our wildest expectations...
...Congress, committee chairmen are known as the old bulls for a reason: it's unwise to provoke them. So it isn't often that you see one get rolled by his own committee - especially when the chairman in question is the formidable and canny Henry Waxman and the issue in question is one that matters a lot to him. But that was what happened on July 31 as the House Energy and Commerce Committee was putting the final touches on health-reform legislation. Waxman's fellow California Democrat Anna Eshoo offered a last-minute amendment that Waxman opposed. Knowing...
...Waxman's loss that day was a big victory for drug companies, which have spent more than any other segment of the medical industry to make sure that they come out winners in the effort to overhaul the nation's health-care system. It's understandable the drugmakers would want a roll-call accounting of who their friends and enemies are, considering the size of the investment they are making on Capitol Hill: in the first six months of this year alone, drug and biotech companies and their trade associations spent more than $110 million - that's about...
...Waxman had pushed to shield biologics for no more than five years - the same amount of time that traditional pharmaceuticals get under the Hatch-Waxman law. President Obama proposed seven years as a compromise...