A Stealth Health Policy Advocate Goes Through the Revolving Door ... Now to Chair the White House Council of Economic Advisers

In 2017, we noted that President Trump had appointed a member of his Council of Economic Advisers who previously was a master corporate stealth health policy advocate.  Now he is getting a promotion.

Prof Tomas Philipson to be Named to Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers

On June 29, the Washington Post reported,

President Trump plans to name economist Tomas Philipson as the next head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, according to senior administration officials.

Philipson has worked at the White House for nearly two years as a senior economist after serving briefly on the transition team. Best known for his research on health care, Philipson has been a key player in the Trump administration’s efforts to lower drug prices and push back against Democrats’ proposals for a Medicare-for-all system.

The Post noted that during his tenure on the Council it released a report warning of the financial dangers of proposals for a national single payer health insurance system ("Medicare for all"), which is labelled "socialism."

Also, it quoted him as saying

Deregulation is the cornerstone of the president’s pro-growth economic policies that has been implemented since he took office,

The article also briefly described his "long career and academia and public service."

An article on the NPR site included this testimonial:

'Tom is a very fresh thinker,' said Mark McClellan, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration who recruited Philipson to work for him, first at the FDA and later at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. 'Tom had a great background in health economics and wanted to do work that was very policy relevant. So it was a win-win.'

A health economist as the chief White House economic adviser sounds like a good idea on its face, but the reality is much more complex.  

Philipson's Career as a Master Stealth Health Policy Advocate

In February, 2017, months before Philipson ascended to the Council, a ProPublica article noted that Philipson was "the third co-founder of Precision Health Economics" (PHE).

As we said later in 2017, PHE was in the business of using its experts' academic credentials to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies influence public policy in their favor. From the ProPublica article

Over the last three years, pharmaceutical companies have mounted a public relations blitz to tout new cures for the hepatitis C virus and persuade insurers, including government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, to cover the costs.

So,

To persuade payers and the public, the industry has deployed a potent new ally, a company whose marquee figures are leading economists and health care experts at the nation’s top universities. The company, Precision Health Economics, consults for three leading makers of new hepatitis C treatments: Gilead, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and AbbVie.

Furthermore,

This is just an extension of the way that the drug industry has been involved in every phase of medical education and medical research,' said Harvard Medical School professor Eric G. Campbell, who studies medical conflicts of interest. 'They are using this group of economists it appears to provide data in high-profile journals to have a positive impact on policy.'

PHE has worked with some of the biggest pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and trade groups. In particular,

The roster includes Abbott Nutrition, AbbVie, Amgen, Biogen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene, Gilead, Intuitive Surgical, Janssen [a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson], Merck, the National Pharmaceutical Council, Novartis, Otsuka, Pfizer, PhRMA, rEVO Biologics, Shire and Takeda.

ProPublica described some of the tactics PHE uses:

The firm participates in many aspects of a drug’s launch, both advising on 'pricing strategies' and then demonstrating the value of a drug once it comes on the market, according to its brochure. 'Led by professors at elite research universities,' the group boasts of a range of valuable services it has delivered to clients, including generating 'academic publications in the world’s leading research journals” and helping to lead “formal public debates in prestigious, closely watched forums.'

PHE has worked on campaigns to persuade the government and insurers to increase what they would pay for oncology drugs, and for Amgen's PCSK9 inhibitor (Repatha) for hypercholesterolemia.
 
Tomas Philipson was one of the principals of PHE:

Precision Health Economics may be well-positioned to influence the Trump administration. Tomas Philipson, an economist at the University of Chicago and the third co-founder of Precision Health Economics, reportedly served briefly as a senior health care adviser for the Trump transition team. He did not respond to requests for comment.

He has taken an active role in stealth health policy advocacy campaigns run by PHE.  For example, as part of the PHE campaign to advocate for generous government and commercial insurance payments for Repatha, Philipson disparaged an analysis by the Institute of Clinical and Economic Review which had suggested the drug was overpriced:

Philipson, the Precision Health Economics co-founder, and Jena wrote an op-ed in Forbes, citing the institute’s research and deriding its approach to value pricing as 'pseudo-science and voodoo economics.'

PHE and its principals, including Philipson, often failed to disclose relevant conflicts of interest.  For example, re the above Forbes article,

Only Philipson disclosed his ties to Precision Health Economics, and neither academic disclosed that Amgen was a client of the firm.

Failing to disclose the Amgen funding of their work in this context appeared deceptive.

Up to the time of his appointment to the Council of Economic Advisers, Philipson seemed to be enhancing his position at PHE.  In particular, in 2015, after PHE was bought out by a privately held biotechnology company, "Philipson ... [was] listed as chief economist and the chair of the strategy and innovation board."


However, Philipson's previous work on stealth advocacy campaigns for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies did not prevent him from becoming a member of the Council of Economic Advisers.  Now that Philipson is likely to ascend to the chair of the Council, Philipson's previous record of stealth health policy advocacy has been anechoic.

Summary and Conclusions

The anechoic nature of this latest case shows how we are becoming numb to many common abuses in health care in the face of even worse abuses in the larger political economy, the ultimate defining down of deviancy.

Nonetheless, let me first emphasize that Philipson came through the revolving door from his role as a stealth health policy advocate to become a major Trump regime economic adviser.

We and others have said again and again that the revolving door is a species of conflict of interest. Worse, some experts have suggested that the revolving door is in fact corruption.  In particular, as we noted here, the experts from the distinguished European anti-corruption group U4 wrote,

The literature makes clear that the revolving door process is a source of valuable political connections for private firms. But it generates corruption risks and has strong distortionary effects on the economy, especially when this power is concentrated within a few firms.

In the Trump era, many people have come through the incoming revolving door, that is, people with significant leadership positions in health care corporations or related groups have attained leadership positions in government agencies whose regulations or policies could affect their former employers.  Many examples, starting with Philipson's initial appointment to the Council, appeared here.  The more people transit the revolving door from the world of big corporations to government, the more government appears rigged to do the bidding of big corporations and their  munificently paid leaders.


Furthermore,  have previously noted that promotion of health policies that allowed overheated selling of overpriced and over-hyped health care products and services included various deceptive public relations practices, including orchestrated stealth health policy advocacy campaigns.  Third party strategies used patient advocacy organizations and medical societies that had institutional conflicts of interest due to their funding from companies selling health care products and services, or to the influence of conflicted leaders and board members.  Some deceptive public relations campaigns were extreme enough to be characterized as propaganda or disinformation.

Philipson is not merely an adviser to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.  He was an active participant and innovator in stealth health policy advocacy (or maybe stealth lobbying.)   Putting an innovator in stealth health policy advocacy and lobbying in the top economic position in the White House will only amp up the power of propagandists and disinformation purveyors in government.

Meanwhile, top health care (and other) corporate management is increasingly merging with the current administration in one giant corporatist entity which is not in the interests of health care. To derig the system, we need wholesale, real health care reform that would make health care leaders accountable for what their organizations do, and would cut the ties between government and corporate leaders and their cronies that have lead to government of, for and by corporate executives rather than the people at large.


However, before thinking about true health care reform, we need top accomplish wholesale government reform. We need to excise the deception, crime and corruption at the heart of our government and restore government by the people, of the people, and for the people.