Opinion

Gayle Manchin and her complement of interest

A Daily Mail editorial from the Charleston Gazette-Mail 

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Conflict of interest? Or complement of interest?

It’s safe to say that Gayle Manchin — wife of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, state school board member, member of the National Association of State Boards of Education and mother of $19 million Mylan Pharmaceutical CEO Heather Bresch — has an interest in all things motherly.

Mrs. Manchin and her husband successfully raised three children — two daughters and a son — into adulthood. It’s fair to say she wants other parents to experience that same success and not lose a child to a preventable condition.

So, as pointed out by USA Today in a Wednesday article, she used her influence with others in education to encourage schools to stock the life-saving drug EpiPen on campuses and perhaps prevent unnecessary deaths by children who go into anaphylactic shock due to an allergic reaction.

As a member of the board, Manchin had no purchasing authority with school systems who are members of that national educational group. As that group’s president, her role was to educate and influence policy.

And promoting a product proven to save children’s lives is not promoting bad policy.

 Perhaps she should have promoted an EpiPen competitor instead of EpiPen … but wait — thanks to the overly complex and expensive system to bring new drugs to market in the United States, EpiPen has no real competition.

It’s unlikely that the National Association of State Boards of Education has much influence at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has become an agency of regulatory stagnation and has driven up the cost in both time and money for pharmaceutical companies to bring new drugs to market.

The fact that Congress, the FDA and other regulators continue to drive the free market out of the medical industry is not Gayle Manchin’s fault.

While perhaps she could have/should have issued a disclaimer about her relationship with the Mylan executive — her daughter, Heather Bresch — the relationship was in the news for anyone who wished to research it.

Credit USA Today for bringing up the point, but a better investigative piece would be for USA Today, and the nation’s other news media, to investigate why Congress and a growing regulatory state continue to add cost and unnecessary regulations that squelch competition and reduce our chances of benefiting from new drugs and new medical devices.

To see more from the Charleston Gazette-Mail, click here. 

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