Last Call For You Are The Perfect Drug

If you could build the perfect Trump regime FDA commissioner, you'd want somebody who:

• Was a doctor for credibility
• Taught med school for even better credibility
• Was a long-time Big Pharma lobbyist for decades
• Had a previous stint at the Dubya FDA somewhere
• Sat on multiple drugmaker corporate boards
• Worked at a conservative think tank
• Was against the Affordable Care Act
• Wrote for a conservative policy magazines and newspapers
• Was a venture partner for drug startups

I mean, does a guy like that even exist (oh yeah, he'd have to be a white guy) at all?  Man, who could fit this kinda legendary bill of PharmaBro douchebaggery?

President Donald Trump will nominate Scott Gottlieb, a conservative drug industry insider and former FDA and CMS official, to serve as FDA commissioner, the White House confirmed Friday evening.

Oh.  Well then.

Gottlieb has broad experience in regulating health care and working for the industry. He received nearly $200,000 in payments in 2015 from eight pharmaceutical companies, according to a federal database tracking drug industry payments. All were classified as “general” payments, meaning they were for things like travel and lodging, consulting or speaking fees. In 2014, he received more than $160,000 in general payments from companies.

Gottlieb has been on GlaxoSmithKline’s research and development board since 2010, according to his resume, and previously was on its oncology board. He advises Bristol Meyers Squibb on its cancer drugs and Cell Biotherapy, an oncology start up. Gottlieb was a senior adviser to Vertex Pharmaceuticals, maker of expensive cystic fibrosis drugs, from 2009 through 2016.

He holds seats on the boards of drug companies Daiichi Sankyo and Tolero Pharmaceuticals; medical lab company American Pathology Partners; MedAvante, a contract research organization, and Glytech, which makes an FDA-approved insulin dosing support system. He has also served on the board of insurance and medical diagnostic companies.

Gottlieb was FDA’s deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs from 2005 to 2007, and chief policy adviser to the CMS administrator in 2004, during implementation of Medicare Part D. Earlier he was a senior adviser and director of medical policy development at FDA, where he worked on issues like orphan drugs, and combination products.

Gottlieb has long been a resident fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. He serves on the Federal Health IT Policy Committee, which makes recommendations to HHS’s Office for Healthcare Information Technology. He practices medicine at New York University where he is a clinical assistant professor.

Gottlieb's free-market health policy positions are well known thanks to regular op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, and FDA-related testimony to Congress. This fall he gave testimony criticizing FDA’s regulation of generic drugs, during a hearing on pharmaceutical industry competition occasioned by the rising prices of the EpiPen.

Oh yeah, this guy is the gotdamn Maserati of Pharmabros.  He's Martin Shkreli with policy chops.  You need to invent cloning and approve the FDA cloning procedure just to make copies of this mofo right here.

Hope you liked food and drug regulations because man, they are going the hell away.