Robert Zirkelbach Robert Zirkelbach is Executive Vice President of Public Affairs at PhRMA. He joined PhRMA in 2014 after working for seven years representing the health insurance industry. He likes Saturday afternoon BBQs on his deck, traveling, trying new restaurants, and attempting to play golf. He’s an avid, somewhat obsessive, Iowa Hawkeye fan and is lucky to have a wife that loves watching college football on Saturday afternoons.
Recent Posts
New poll finds majority of voters oppose government price-setting for prescription drugs
By Robert Zirkelbach | September 23, 2015
Majority of voters (51 percent compared to 36 percent) oppose allowing the federal government to set the price of prescription medicines, a poll released today found. The Morning Consult poll of...
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3 Points You Need to Know about the Federal Government’s Health Spending Projections
By Robert Zirkelbach | July 28, 2015
New National Health Expenditure (NHE) projections released today by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) call into question claims that have been made in recent months about the...
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Focusing on Only 1% of Spending Will Not Solve Nation’s Health Care Challenges
By Robert Zirkelbach | July 23, 2015
Commentary published today in Mayo Clinic Proceedings highlights a critical challenge facing cancer patients: the ability to access the medicines they need. But rather than address this issue...
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Are new hep C treatments cost effective? Doctors say answer is “a resounding yes”
By Robert Zirkelbach | July 14, 2015
In case you missed it, a recent Bloomberg story features a new report from an influential panel of doctors and medical experts which finds that new treatments for hepatitis C are “cost effective.”...
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WSJ Editorial: SCOTUS Needs to Hear Alameda Case
By Robert Zirkelbach | May 18, 2015
A new editorial in the Wall Street Journal, “Bad Drug Trip in Alameda,” highlights a case currently before the Supreme Court (SCOTUS), PhRMA v. Alameda, that challenges a drug take-back program...
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Yet Another Misleading Report on Medicine Prices
By Robert Zirkelbach | May 13, 2015
Today Express Scripts released yet another misleading report to promote a false narrative about medicine spending in the United States. For more than 50 years, spending on medicines has...
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Voters Agree: Congress Should Protect Patents
By Robert Zirkelbach | May 12, 2015
A recent poll by the Morning Consult confirms what is likely intuitive to most: strong intellectual property (IP) rights are important to voters for a variety of reasons. In the recent poll, a...
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What They Are Saying: Close Patent Loopholes That Threaten Innovation for Patients
By Robert Zirkelbach | April 29, 2015
“When we developed these proceedings, we never thought people would use them this way” - Former general counsel of the PTO New administrative proceedings at the Patent and Trademark Office...
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Why Cross-Country Comparisons on Drug Prices are Misleading
By Robert Zirkelbach | April 24, 2015
Too often, critics greatly exaggerate price differences between the U.S. and other countries to create an erroneous impression that medicines are a major driver of U.S. health care cost growth –...
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What They Are Saying: Stakeholders Raise Concerns about Patent Litigation Reform
By Robert Zirkelbach | April 24, 2015
Patents are critical to the innovation ecosystem, and the lifeblood of the biopharmaceutical industry. Protecting and enforcing them is essential to keeping the engine of scientific discovery...
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