The Capitol Forum Podcast

Alvaro Bedoya was sworn in May 16, 2022 as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. President Joe Biden named Bedoya to a term that expires on Sept. 25, 2026.Bedoya was the founding director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was also a visiting professor of law. He has been influential in research and policy at the intersection of privacy and civil rights, and co-authored a 2016 report on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement and the risks that it poses to privacy, civil liberties, and civil rights. He previously served as the first Chief Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law after its founding in 2011, and Chief Counsel to former Senator Al Franken, of Minnesota. Prior to that, he was an associate at the law firm WilmerHale.

This week on Second Request, our host Teddy Downey is joined by Luke Slindee, Senior Pharmacy consultant at Myers and Stauffer LC. In this role, Luke helps facilitate the data collection, data analysis, and public posting of pharmacy actual acquisition cost benchmarks, reducing NADAC and multiple State AACs. Luke is widely recognized for his expertise in pharmacy policy and competition rules.

This week on Second Request, the Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984 laid out a pathway for generic drugs to come to market as patent protections for brand name drugs expire. But brand-name producers have found a way to stave off competition: paying generic producers to delay market entry of their cheaper drugs.

Tommaso Valletti is Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School and also the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" (on leave). He was formerly the Chief Competition Economist of the European Commission,In a recent paper, "Structuring a Structural Presumption for Merger Review," Tommaso and Filippo Lancieri discuss the key standards that should drive antitrust enforcement.

With the FTC already investigating the liquor distribution market as well as Big Soda as it tries to enter the beer market, and with the Department of Treasury's TTB undertaking a rulemaking to revamp alcohol competition law, the timing couldn't be better to hear from Harry Schuhmacher on his views on problematic conduct in the alcohol markets.Harry Schuhmacher is Editor & Publisher of Beer Business Daily, Craft Business Daily and Wine & Spirits Daily – all read on every continent except Antarctica. Harry has worked in the beer business for over 30 years in a variety of positions, and has published Beer Business Daily for over twenty years. In addition, he is the producer of the Beer Industry Summit and the Wine & Spirits Summit. He is often quoted as a beer industry expert in national publications such as Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.

46brooklyn is a group of pharmacy experts who set out to educate others about what they had learned about the frustrating complexity of the U.S. drug pricing system. As 46brooklyn dug into the pharmaceutical supply chain, Ohio began uncovering hundreds of millions of dollars in state overspending on prescription drugs through its Ohio Medicaid program. 46brooklyn's founders had begun doing data analytics and research to help uncover massive disconnects between pharmacy reimbursements, the actual costs of prescription drugs, and what the state of Ohio was getting charged through its state Medicaid program.Ever since, 46brooklyn has spearheaded a national push for more transparency into the pharmaceutical supply chain, particularly the role played by Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs).

On February 2nd, Propublica and The Capitol Forum co-published a blockbuster article: "UnitedHealthcare Tried to Deny Coverage to a Chronically Ill Patient. He Fought Back, Exposing the Insurer’s Inner Workings."It is a shocking story about a persistent effort by an insurer to choose profit over patient health, and we discuss the reporting for the story in-depth with two of the authors. We also explore what the reporters learned about UnitedHealth's culture and the gaps in oversight and enforcement when it comes to the government's role in policing and regulating insurance companies.

The FTC recently proposed to ban noncompete agreements, and one of the most persistent advocates for this rule is Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at the Open Markets Institute.Vaheesan leads Open Markets’ legal advocacy and research work, including its amicus program. Vaheesan works on a range of anti-monopoly topics, including antitrust law’s role in structuring labor markets and promoting fair competition. From 2015 to 2018, he served as a regulations counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he helped develop rules on payday and title lending and debt collection practices. Before that, he worked at the American Antitrust Institute.Vaheesan’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Harvard Law & Policy Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Yale Law Journal Forum. He has a forthcoming book titled Democracy in Power with the University of Chicago Press on the history of public and cooperative power in the United States and the lessons it offers for building a clean, publicly accountable electric industry today.

The FTC recently issued a proposed rule to ban noncompete clauses, which the agency estimates could increase workers’ earnings by nearly $300 billion per year.Elizabeth Wilkins is the FTC’s Director of the Office of Policy Planning, and the lead on the proposed rule on noncompetes.The Office of Policy Planning assists the Commission to develop and implement long-range competition and consumer protection policy initiatives and advises staff on cases raising new or complex policy and legal issues.One of the Office of Policy Planning's primary roles involves advocacy, submitting filings supporting competition and consumer protection principles to state legislatures, regulatory boards, and officials; state and federal courts; other federal agencies; and professional organizations. The Office also organizes public workshops and issues reports on cutting-edge competition and consumer protection topics, addressing questions of substantive antitrust law, industry-specific practices, and significant national and international policy debates. In addition to the Office of Policy Planning, several offices throughout the Commission, including the Bureau of Competition’s Office of Policy and Coordination, also provide policy advice.

“In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we’re in a new era of “chokepoint capitalism,” with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative workers. From Amazon’s use of digital rights management and bundling to radically change the economics of book publishing, to Google and Facebook’s siphoning away of ad revenues from news media, and the Big Three record labels’ use of inordinately long contracts to up their own margins at the cost of artists, chokepoints are everywhere.”“By analyzing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct “anti-competitive flywheels” designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices.”“In the book’s second half, Giblin and Doctorow then explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work.”https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710957/chokepoint-capitalism-by-cory-doctorow-and-rebecca-giblin/