Sunday Sept 6, 1992 - The Wichita Eagle Beacon - By Frank Greve - Eagle Washington bureau - QUAYLE INTERVENTIONS FOR DURG INDUSTRY PUZZLE MANY WHO SHY HELP NOT NEEDED.

Washington - The U.S. drug industry has gained regulatory relief worth billions of dollars from recent interventions by the White House Council on Competitiveness, headed by Vice President Dan Quayle.

It is unclear to industry experts why the financially robust drug industry needs the council’s help. In addition, critics assert that some of the council’s actions will raise costs of drugs to consumers, reduce drug safety or both.

“The council doesn’t often take a pro-consumer position, and it’s something we’re very concerned aboutr,” said Dan Durham, a lobbyists who follows prescription drug issues for the American Assocaiton of Retired Persons.

“Drug companies have had tremendous back-door influence at the Counciul on Competitiveness - often at the expense of the public interest,” charged Rep. Henry Waxman, Health and Environment subcomittee.

President Bush created the Competitiveness Council in April 1990 to review proposed federal regulations and press agaency heads to curb them if, in the council’s view, the rules overburdened regulated industries.

Quayle’s council drew criticism from Waxman after it pressed the Environmental Protection Agency to relent on air pollution control rules that drug makers, among others, opposed.

The drug companies are expected to gain most from a pledge obtianed by the council from the Food and Drug Administration to cut 2 1/2 hears from the seven-to-12 years that it takes new drugs to win FDA approval. The speedup - to be accomplished partly by using non-government test labs and foreign drug test results - is worth $1 billion a year to drug companies, by administration estimates.

Private health analysts have warned that the use of non-government labs to speed drug approvals could endanger public health. The private labs depend on the drug companies for much of the business, the analysts note, and could be susceptible to pressure.

In addition, the government’s National Institutes of Health plan to realign their $9 billion annual research program to better fit the needs of drug makers.

“These are all measures that drug companies love,” said MIT economist Peter Tamen, a pharmaceuticals specalists. “Not that they are all bad, but certainly they are what pharmaceutical companies have sought for a long time. They clearly show that the Competitiveness Council is on the side of the drug companies.”

Unclear is why the $75 billion - a year drug industry needs help.

“It’s a total mystery to me why they’d be helping pharmaceuticals,” said Alfred Chander Jr., a Harvard Business School professor who has written recently about competitiveness. “I’d be more concerned about industri4es like automobiles.”

Pharmaceuticals are “the country’s most internationally competitive industry,” Gerald Mossinghoff, president of the Pharmaceutical Manufactures Association, told the House Ways and Means trade sub-sommitted in April.

The industry’s domestic health also is robost. Drug makers posted earnings gains averaging 34 percent in 1990-91, while most U.S. manufacturers lost ground. Overall, prescription drug prices rose at three times the U.S. inflation rate between 1985 and 1991, according to the General Accounting Office report released last month.

Because the Competitiveness Council maintains that its deliberations are secret, there’s no explicit administration rationale for helping drug companies. A chartger document says only that a council panel will”review the condition of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry and suggest options for maintaining its health and competitive position.”

Jeff Nesbit, a spokesman for Quayle and the council, said he did not believe that pharmaceuticals had been favored. “We are working hard on behalf of any industry competitive in the world marketplace,” he said.