In Utah, an unlikely crusader fights the generic-drug industry with his own free-market approach

Nothing in Dan Liljenquist’s background suggests a desire to upend the generic drug industry.

He is a Republican businessman who believes in free market capitalism. He hails from the conservative state of Utah. And as someone who was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, he concedes that medicines produced by the pharmaceutical industry, as currently constituted, saved his life.

But Liljenquist, a former state senator, is now leading Intermountain Healthcare’s effort to create a nonprofit drug company designed to undercut generic manufacturers in key markets, preventing them from continually jacking up prices on products that have been around for decades.

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