Gone, but not gone

President Bush's decision to transfer one of his most talented and likeable players from heading FDA to leading the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reflects the White House's re-election goals more than its interest in public health. However, the shift also promises to cement the importance of CMS to the biopharmaceuticals industry, and the increasing role it will play in stimulating or inhibiting innovation.

If he stays at CMS long enough, Mark McClellan could use the government's role as the largest purchaser of healthcare products to advance some of the goals he pursued at FDA: emphasizing the role of generic competition in containing overall drug costs while rejecting controls on the prices of new products; fighting the reimportation of drugs; and expanding the scope of the government's public health mission to include stimulating the creation of new therapies. ...