BIO CEO & Investor Conference: The New Administration & Congress: Short or Loose Change?

Speakers in a policy session at the BIO CEO & Investor Conference on Monday talked about prospective industry changes based on the new administration. Amid the discussion, speakers shared insights on health care reform and agreed that there can no longer be incremental changes, comprehensive health care reform is needed. Based on their inside knowledge of DC, they strongly felt that efforts are well underway to start the debate this year on comprehensive health care reform. Session Information The New Administration & Congress: Short or Loose Change? Monday, February 9th After one of the most exciting and historic presidential elections in recent history, it’s now time to get back to business and ascertain how the current, yet ever-changing, political environment will affect the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Join a lively discussion among congressional staffers, biotech political experts, and policy lawyers as they predict the impact of the change of power on the industry and discuss how the incoming administration will likely come down on the policy matters most critical to the drug development process. Moderator James C. Greenwood; President and CEO, BIO Panelists • Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City • Michelle Easton, Partner, Tarplin, & Young; (Former Chief Health and Welfare Counsel, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus) • Scott Gottlieb, Resident Fellow at The American Enterprise Institute (Former Deputy Commissioner for Medical and Scientific Affairs, U.S. Food and Drug Administration) • Steve Usdin, Washington Editor, BioCentury Publications Inc. 

Who's Who ________________________________________ Michael R. Bloomberg; Mayor Bloomberg is an internationally known businessman and politician and also among the world’s richest with a net worth approaching $5 billion. He is president of Bloomberg Financial Markets and was elected mayor of New York City in 2001. Michael Rubens Bloomberg was born on February 14th, 1942 to middle class parents in Medford, Massachusetts. In 1964 he went to Johns Hopkins University to study a BS in Electrical Engineering and in 1966 he studied a Master of Business Administration degree at Harvard University. After University Bloomberg advanced through the ranks at Salomon Brothers and became a partner in 1972. Soon after, he was supervising all of Salomon's stock trading, sales and information systems, but in 1981, after a merger, he was fired. He received a $10 million severance payout which he used to start a financial data and communications company called Bloomberg LP which sold financial information terminals to Wall Street firms. Bloomberg LP has over 165,000 subscribers worldwide. As the business proved its feasibility, the company branched out and in 1990 launched a news service, and then radio, television, Internet, and publishing operations. Bloomberg Financial Markets is a global, multimedia-based distributor of information services, combining news, data and analysis for global financial markets and businesses. As the company showed strong growth Bloomberg dedicated more of his time to philanthropy, his desire to improve education, medical research and increase access to the arts, has provided the motivation for much of his philanthropy. In 1997 Bloomberg published his autobiography, Bloomberg by Bloomberg. All of the royalties from sales of the book are donated to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 2001, Michael Bloomberg run for mayor of New York, spending record breaking amounts of his own money on the campaign. He was elected mayor, succeeding Rudy Giuliani. Bloomberg served as the Chairman of the Board Trustees for Johns Hopkins University until May 2002 and was honored when its School of Hygiene and Public Health was renamed “The Bloomberg School of Public Health” a tribute to his leadership and use of philanthropy to improve the human condition.

James C. Greenwood; Mr. Greenwood is President and CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) in Washington, D.C., which represents more than 1,200 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations across the United States and in more than 30 other nations. BIO members are involved in the research and development of innovative healthcare, agricultural, industrial and environmental biotechnology products. BIO also produces the annual BIO International Convention, the world's largest gathering of the biotechnology industry, along with industry-leading investor and partnering meetings held around the world. Since his appointment in January of 2005, he has markedly enhanced the trade association’s capacity – increasing both its staff and budget by nearly fifty percent. BIO is now a world class advocacy organization playing a leading role in shaping public policy on a variety of fronts critical to the success of the biotechnology industry at the state and national levels as well as internationally. Mr. Greenwood represented Pennsylvania's Eighth District in the U.S. House of Representatives from January 1993 through January 2005. A senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, he was widely viewed as a leader on health care and the environment. From 2001 to 2004, Mr. Greenwood served as Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation with oversight authority over issues in the full Committee's vast jurisdiction. He led hard-hitting investigations into corporate governance at Enron, Global Crossing and WorldCom; terrorist threats to our nation's infrastructure; and waste and fraud in federal government agencies. Prior to his election to Congress, Mr. Greenwood served six years in the Pennsylvania General Assembly (1980-86) and six years in the Pennsylvania Senate (1986-1993). Mr. Greenwood graduated from Dickinson College in 1973 with a BA in Sociology. From 1977 until 1980, he worked as a caseworker with abused and neglected children at the Bucks County Children and Youth Social Service Agency. Mr. Greenwood resides in Upper Makefield, Pennsylvania with his wife and three children. Michelle Easton; Ms. Easton served as chief health counsel to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. Ms. Easton has worked on health care reform, Medicare, and Medicaid at the Finance Committee since early 2006. She’s also a former staff director for the Senate Special Committee on Aging, and was a legislative counsel to then-Sen. John Breaux, D-La.

Scott Gottlieb, MD; Dr. Scott Gottlieb is a practicing physician and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a private, nonpartisan, not-for-profit institution dedicated to research and education on issues of government, economics and social welfare. In addition, he is an internist on the hospital's inpatient medical wards at Stamford Hospital in Stamford, Connecticut. From 2005-2007, Dr. Gottlieb served as FDA Deputy Commissioner and before that, from 2003-2004, as a senior advisor to the Food and Drug Administration's Commissioner Mark McClellan and as the FDA's Director of Medical Policy Development. He left FDA in the spring of 2004 to work on implementation of the new Medicare Drug Benefit as a Senior Adviser to the Administrator of Medicare and Medicaid Services, where he supported the agency's policy work on quality improvement and coverage and payment decision-making, particularly related to new medical technologies. Dr. Gottlieb is the author of more than 300 articles that have appeared in leading medical journals, as well as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today and Forbes magazine. Dr. Gottlieb has held editorial positions on the British Medical Journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association and appears regularly as a guest commentator on the cable financial news channel CNBC. Dr. Gottlieb completed his residency in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and is a graduate of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and of Wesleyan University, in Connecticut.

Steve Usdin; The original Washington Editor of BioCentury, Mr. Usdin has spent the past 15 years covering political and policy issues affecting the life sciences sector in Washington. He also is the Senior Editor responsible for coverage of social issues involving biotechnology. Steve’s reporting about biotechnology and biomedical policy have been cited in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, New Scientist and other publications. He also has traveled and reported extensively on the intersection of science, technology and policy, as well as on intelligence and national security issues, in Japan, Russia and the former Soviet Union, India, China and Western Europe. His book, “Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley,” was published in 2005 by Yale University Press.