Elizabeth Warren Warns: DoD Reliance On China For Pharmaceuticals ‘Is A Threat To Our Readiness’

2 days ago

During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to consider the nominations for the Department Of Defense on Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) expressed her concerns regarding military pharmaceutical supply chains.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Health care for our men and women in uniform is critical

00:05in peacetime and even more so in wartime. Mr. Bass, if you are confirmed as

00:11Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, you're going to be

00:14responsible for ensuring nearly 10 million service members and their

00:20families receive quality health care, including timely access to medication.

00:28I am very concerned about our over-reliance on foreign nations for

00:32the very medications that put the health of service members at risk and

00:38our national security along with it. DOD spends over $5 billion on

00:43prescription drugs each year. It's a lot of money. But in November 2023,

00:49the Defense Logistics Agency released a report revealing that the supply

00:55chain for a third of all drugs on the FDA's essential medicines list is at

01:03very high risk. Why? Because the ingredients from these drugs are

01:08sourced from China, or we don't even know where they're sourced from. So,

01:15Mr. Bass, do you agree that it is a threat to our readiness and the

01:19potential health of our service members that DOD's pharmaceutical supply

01:24chain relies so heavily on China? Thank you, Senator, and thank you again for

01:31meeting with me. I do agree that it is a threat. It is a vulnerability. So, this

01:37over-reliance gives our adversaries the power to restrict DOD's access to drugs

01:44when we need to be able to treat our men and women in uniform. It also leaves us

01:49with much less visibility into the practices of foreign manufacturers, which

01:55by the way, routinely have quality issues that threaten both the efficacy and the

02:01safety of these drugs. For these reasons, the DOD report recommends boosting the

02:08production of finished drugs, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and other key

02:14starting materials so that we are making more of this right here in the United

02:19States. Mr. Bass, do you think DOD should work to onshore the critical drugs the

02:25military needs, including writing contracts that require manufacturers to

02:32onshore these capabilities? Thank you, Senator. I do. I think that we need to

02:38work with our industrial base, our private and public partners, and we need

02:43to have rapid response contracts, and we need to make sure that we either onshore

02:47or nearshore capabilities. Good. I'm glad to hear you say this. DOD should

02:53prioritize domestic purchasing, but there are some instances where it makes sense

02:59for DOD to actually produce the medication itself, like when the DOD is

03:05the sole customer for that medication. One example, the adenovirus vaccine, which

03:13is critical in preventing serious respiratory illness among service

03:17members, particularly service members in basic training. DOD developed the

03:23vaccine and licensed it then to private industry, but because the military is

03:28basically the only buyer, DOD couldn't find a commercial manufacturer for

03:34nearly a decade. DOD eventually had to pay a private manufacturer nearly a

03:39hundred million dollars just to resume production, and during the years that the

03:45private sector refused to manufacture for DOD, there were thousands of cases of

03:50adenovirus per month and service members who actually died. So, Mr. Bass, if

03:58confirmed, will you commit to expanding DOD's capabilities of producing

04:04essential drugs in-house to reduce risk and to secure DOD's medical supply chain?

04:12Thank you, Senator. The health and well-being of all of our military

04:16members is a priority. I am not familiar with the report, but I commit to working

04:20with you and your staff. All right. I appreciate that because this is a

04:24serious problem, and ultimately these are investments that will pay off. One expert

04:30estimated that DOD would make its money back in three years after building its

04:36own adenovirus manufacturing facility. This is a long-standing bipartisan

04:43concern. I worked with Senator Rubio for years on this, and last year the Senate

04:48adopted our language directing DOD to enter into contracts to domestically

04:54manufacture drugs and drug components that are currently sourced overseas and

04:59that are used exclusively by the military. I want to see us get that in

05:04the final version of the NDAA. There's more work to do, and I look forward to

05:09working with you on this, Mr. Bass. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Elizabeth Warren Warns: DoD Reliance On China For Pharmaceuticals ‘Is A Threat To Our Readiness’

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