Despite Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy’s oft-repeated vow to rid the FDA of industry influence, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary announced George Tidmarsh, an industry veteran, will be the next director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).
“Pharmaceuticals will be tariffed, probably at the end of the month,” U.S. President Donald Trump said, as he provided a few more details about his proposed global biopharma sector tariff. “We’re going to start off with a low tariff and give the pharmaceutical companies a year or so to build. And then we’re going to make it a very high tariff.”
Once again, U.S. legislative reforms to rein in pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) business practices missed a ride to finally becoming law. This time, they were kicked out of the Trump administration’s budget reconciliation bill that was signed into law July 4. House Resolution 1, as first passed in the lower chamber, included a few PBM reforms, but they were deleted from the Senate version that ultimately became law because the parliamentarian ruled they didn’t meet the restrictions placed on reconciliation measures.
It’s been more than seven years in coming, but the U.S. FDA is at last making public at least some of the complete response letters (CRLs) it’s sent to drug and biologic sponsors to notify them of deficiencies in their approval applications.
The U.S. Commerce Department isn't expected to complete its Section 232 investigation to build a national security case for imposing tariffs on biopharmaceuticals until the end of the month, but that didn’t stop President Donald Trump from once again teasing a “very, very high” tariff for medicines and their ingredients.
With the June 9 U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee party-line vote of 12-11, Susan Monarez’s nomination is headed to the Senate floor where she could become the first CDC director to go through the confirmation process. That’s thanks to a provision in the bipartisan PREVENT Pandemics Act that was signed into law in 2022.
Led by the American Academy of Pediatrics, several medical groups went to court July 7 to force Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy to restore the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and healthy children ages 6 months to 17 years.
Finding they were “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedures Act, the District Court for the District of Columbia vacated a White House Office of Personnel Management memo and a subsequent Department of Health and Human Services’ guidance intended to implement President Donald Trump’s Day 1 executive order pertaining to gender ideology.
In subpoenaing a former Pfizer Inc. official to appear before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee July 22, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, signaled legislative steps Congress may take in response to allegations that Pfizer slow-walked its COVID-19 vaccine development in 2020 so the trial results wouldn’t have to be disclosed until after the presidential election.
The U.S. Health and Human Services and the Justice Departments are bringing more resources to their crack down on False Claims Act (FCA) violations involving drugs, medical devices and Medicare fraud.
