Drugmakers Have Even Less Reason to Fear Price Reform Now
With people hoping for a coronavirus vaccine, Congress has less leverage to rein in the industry.
Michelle McMurry-Heath
Photographer: Jared Soares for Bloomberg Businessweek
When a headhunter for the drug industry approached Michelle McMurry-Heath in January about taking the helm of a powerful trade group, she brushed off the offer. She wasn’t interested in making “bad-smelling” positions palatable to Washington. “If you’re looking for a typical lobbyist,” she recalls saying, “I’m not that person.”
McMurry-Heath holds an M.D.-Ph.D., has worked at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Johnson & Johnson, and calls access to medicine “the social justice issue of our time.” The Biotechnology Innovation Organization had accelerated a search for its next leader as the novel coronavirus jumped across borders, and McMurry-Heath stood out. “She wasn’t the clear, obvious choice,” says Jeremy Levin, the chairman of BIO. Its last chief executive officer was former Republican Representative James Greenwood of Pennsylvania. “But we had the opportunity to make a statement.”