Waxman, Henry

Grabowski, Henry, and John Vernon. 1996. Longer Patents for Increased Generic Competition The Waxman-Hatch Act after One Decade. PharmacoEconomics 10 (Suppl. 2) 110-123. 

Henry A. Waxman. Pharmaceutical Industry Profits Increase by Over 8 Billion after Medicare Drug Plan Goes into Effect, Committee on Government Reform. Available online. URL http //oversight.house.gov/documents/20060919115623 70677.pdf. Posted September 2006. 

Henry Waxman, Democratic representative from California since 1975. In an unusual instance of cooperation across parties, Waxman cosponsored a bill in 1984 with conservative Republican senator Orrin Hatch called the Drug Price Competition and Patent Restoration Act. The bill helped consumers by making it easier and faster for less expensive generic drugs to get approval from the FDA. It helped drug companies by allowing their patents to be extended when the development and approval process took a particularly long time. 

The Wall Street Journal reported that several weeks before the Bhopal disaster, Union Carbide changed procedures at its Institute West VA plant, on which the Bhopal plant design was based, to prevent a similar incident. Rep. Henry Waxman (D. CA.) disclosed that a Union Carbide safety team in September had warned of a potential runaway reaction of methyl isocyanate at Institute and the EPA had reported that there were 28 small leaks of the chemical in 1980 at the facility (Winslow, 1985). 

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