Utah Republican has investments in companies he is regulating

WASHINGTON — Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) revealed in his financial disclosure report for December 2022 that he's been trading stocks for some of the companies that he's supposed to be regulating.

With investments in UnitedHealth Group Incorporated Common Stock (UNH) and the pharmaceutical company Zoetis, Curtis was offering legislation like the Increasing Access to Dental Insurance Act. The bill would create more stand-alone dental insurance plans on the Affordable Care Act exchange.

As a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Health, Curtis has direct oversight on "the health sector broadly," the website reads, "including private and public health insurance" and "biomedical research and development," among other responsibilities.

In April of last year, Curtis introduced the Prescription Information Modernization Act, which would digitize information about specific drugs and update the information. But it would also cut down on the packets of information consumers get in their prescriptions.

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"The proposed FDA rule would give prescribers the option to choose which method of receiving PI they prefer for both their business and patients," Curtis' office said in a press release. "In addition, the bulky paper distribution method has significantly contributed to waste in the industry, with some 90 billion sheets of paper that are printed each year to comply with the 1962 requirement."

It isn't the first time that Curtis has been caught in buying stocks based on the companies that saw a boost as a result of a healthcare crisis. In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 crisis, the Salt Lake City Tribune reported that Curtis bought stocks boosted by coronavirus.

"The purchases of stock in a now-popular videoconference provider, Zoom, a laboratory producing a rapid-result test for COVID-19, a firm tapped by the Federal Reserve to buy up bonds and a video game maker all appear apt to profit off the crisis," said the report.

Curtis denied any impropriety, saying that the Abbott Laboratories stock that was purchased "on the day the Food and Drug Administration approved it to market a quick test for COVID-19, were made by a mutual fund manager without his prior knowledge." The same was true for BlackRock, Inc, which directed billions of bond purchases during the economic crisis that unfolded during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said at the time that the only stock he personally bought was Zoom, the video conferencing app that saw a dramatic increase in use over the course of the pandemic. But it didn't matter because his stock portfolio dropped about 30 percent along with the rest of America.

A Sept. 2022 report by the New York Times listed Curtis among the 97 members of Congress at the time who had stock trades that could be a conflict of interest. Of his 73 trades, 12 are conflicts of interest.

"Mr. Curtis bought shares of the oil refiner Valero Energy and sold shares of Applied Materials, which makes supplies for solar panels, among other products," reported the Times. "He sits on the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee for Environment and Climate Change, which focuses on harmful emissions and other environmental concerns."

Other Curtis investments include tech companies he regulated on the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communication and Technology like Meta, T-Mobile, Alphabet and Intel. His membership on the Subcommittee on the Environment and Climate Change regulated companies like Applied Materials and Valero Energy where Curtis also had stocks.