Point-Counterpoint: Senator Warren's Generic Drug Proposal

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), proposed The Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act, which would allow the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to manufacture or contract out the manufacture of generic drugs. Warren argues that the generic drug system was designed to promote competition, which is supposed to drive prices down. But she notes that “40 percent of generic drugs are made by a single company, and the majority are manufactured by only one or two companies.” “Promoting competition used to be a central goal of economic policymaking,” Warren wrote. “Today, in the market after market, competition is dying as a handful of giant companies gain more and more market share. And as these companies get bigger, they create a vicious cycle, spending millions more on politics and lobbying to rig the rules, crushing potential competitors and further insulating themselves from legal or market accountability.”
Assuming all that is true, wouldn’t it make more sense to strengthen anti-trust legislation to prevent companies from growing too large or cracking down on lobbying, instead of shifting an entire industry over to government control? In 2017, generic drug sales were $104 billion. Warren’s proposal takes on a rather different spin if it’s reframed as Federal government to take over $104 billion industry.