After all the rhetoric is gone, the villains vilified, and the talking points spoken, it’s time to focus on what’s next for President-elect Donald Trump. Here are ten things for him to consider:

1. Eliminate the Independent Payment Advisory Board with the stroke of a pen. Simple, swift, and symbolic.

2. Direct the FDA to issue guidance permitting the judicious sharing of truthful, accurate, and non-misleading off-label information.

3. Redesign state exchange subsidies to promote enrollment by healthy, young participants.

See also: What’s Next for the FDA During the Trump Administration

4. Allow insurers to offer policies across state lines, recognizing a national economy of scale and increasing consumer choice. This means more options through less government.

5. Expedite the FDA’s real-world evidence program to be fully in place and actionable within two years.

6. Create an HHS Innovation Czar, who is responsible for aggressive FDA, CDC, and NIH efforts to design and advance medical research, public health, and regulatory science.

7. Create a committee to develop a blueprint for fair and transparent pricing and free-market rewards for investment

8. Announce a four-year commitment to infuse personal responsibility into healthcare with a strategically bold and tactically creative campaign aimed at better nutrition and regular exercise.

See also: Allowing Off-Label Data Would Do More to Protect Public Health

9. Develop, expand, and upgrade payment models to reward healthcare rather than sick care.

10. Reduce inefficiencies, fraud, and abuse in the system by promoting administrative simplification and improving medication adherence.

Make sure that the patient is at the center of every single reform. Let’s also make sure that reforms are actionable — and result in less government intrusion. Revoke the medical license of Uncle Sam, MD. Big Government, like Big Data, can be as much the problem as the fix. 


Peter Pitts is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. 

From the January 01, 2017 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media