‘A dark and elaborate art’: How pharma executives are training to avoid disaster at Tuesday’s congressional grilling
WASHINGTON — It is a collection of news clips that terrifies corporate executives.
“Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli pleading the Fifth Amendment. Lawmakers scolding the CEOs of Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors for flying private jets to hearings at which they’d plead for a $25 billion government bailout. A committee chairman imploring a witness accused of financial crimes to “try an honest answer.”
It’s a pantheon of nationally televised corporate implosions that represents a worst-case — and increasingly plausible — scenario for the pharmaceutical industry Tuesday, when seven executives from major drug companies will testify before the Senate Finance Committee about the high cost of prescription medicines.
To avoid the fate of so many executives before them, the pharmaceutical companies are shelling out for lawyers and strategic communications experts who specialize in teaching unpopular corporate figures how to survive a Capitol Hill grilling.
Read more: The fighter, the saint, and the odd man out: the executives who will defend pharma before Congress
STAT spoke with more than a dozen corporate
