Dan Gilman on the FTC and PBMs
ICLE Senior Scholar Daniel J. Gilman was quoted by Fierce Healthcare in a story about the implications of the presidential election for the Federal Trade Commission’s potential actions against pharmaceutical benefit managers. You can read the full piece here.
“It’s really an embarrassment given the many able economic and policy researchers on staff at the agency,” said Dan Gilman, Ph.D., senior scholar of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics and former attorney for the FTC. “There are many suggestions that there are, or may be, competitive problems, but there’s no analysis and there are no novel findings. It should be based on specific findings about specific practices, not anecdotes and loose intimations of competitive harm.”
…“I believe that there are staff who are still at the agency who could have produced a much better report than the interim one we’ve seen,” said Gilman. “A new chair—whether from a President Harris or a President Trump—wouldn’t necessarily imply undue influence.”
“I think she’s performed poorly. I’m not sure what anybody expected,” Gilman added, noting her inexperience. “Having been inside the building, I saw far too many managerial mis-steps, and that’s entirely independent of what you think of her general take on antitrust.”
…Gilman wonders whether a more in-depth report after the election will produce the findings some parties are expecting.
“I doubt we’ll see the need for a general statutory or regulatory reform of the industry,” he said. “After several years of suggestions about a changed market since the FTC’s 2005 report, we still haven’t seen any substantial, systematic account of the sorts of relevant changes that would justify major policy reform. Maybe it’s there in-waiting, but I have to wonder.”