The Food and Drug Administration’s unprecedented approval of Florida’s plan to import drugs from Canada was made possible only after Alex Azar, as the Trump administration’s Health and Human Services secretary, certified that bringing medicines over the border could be done safely.
Azar made the historic declaration in September 2020, just two months before his boss, former President Donald Trump, lost reelection.
Now, Azar’s involved in the business of making importation happen. He is chairman of the board of LifeScience Logistics, a Dallas-based company that Florida is paying as much as $39 million to help manage its Canadian drug importation program, not including the cost of drugs.
LifeScience officials confirmed Azar’s position but didn’t respond to questions about how much he is paid or whether he’s involved in the Florida work. Azar didn’t return messages left with his employers or sent to a personal email address.
This whole issue is being astroturfed by greedy American pharmaceutical companies that want to keep lining their pockets with rediciulous prices, and greedy American politicians that want to get their cut in the importation business.
End result is that nothing meaningful will change for people who are supposed to be helped by this. What a shame.
But this politican stopped working for the greedy pharmaceuticals and is working for the ones that want to undercut them.
It sounds more like he made his own company viable.
Man passed a rule on his way out of his last job that made it so he could be paid millions to implement that rule in his new job. That’s not altruism or “fighting big pharma,” that’s just making a new market for yourself as a middleman.
It might actually help people, but with all the self dealing, dont assume that matters to the people involved.
That’s exactly my point.