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President Donald Trump may use his executive powers to require pharmaceutical companies to make drugs domestically to counter Americans’ dependence on overseas manufacturing, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said. “The coronavirus pandemic brought home that core elements of our medical-supply chain are just as strategic to our national security as, say, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers are, and have to be treated with that same kind of approach, which is to say that we have core domestic manufacturing capabilities” Azar said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio on Tuesday. (Edney and Cirilli, 7/7)

The US has bought up nearly all of the coronavirus drug Remdesivir available on the market, a move that has left scientists frustrated and worried. Remdesivir, made by the company Gilead Sciences originally as an Ebola treatment, is the first drug that has been shown to effectively treat Covid-19. The US has bought 500,000 doses of the drug, enough to clear out Gilead of its stock for all of July and most of August and September. (Graziosi, 7/2)

The drug industry lobbying association PhRMA sued the state of Minnesota over a newly enacted law meant to prevent people who can’t afford their insulin from rationing it. The law, the Alec Smith Emergency Insulin Act, which is named after a 26-year-old man who died after rationing his insulin, allows Minnesotans who would otherwise forgo their insulin to immediately pick up a 30-day supply of the drug from a pharmacy for $35. Drug makers would be forced to provide the insulin for free or face hefty fines. The law was slated to go into effect Wednesday. (Florko, 7/1)