Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Perspectives: If U.S. Can Negotiate Over Aircraft Carriers, It Can Over Drugs, Too
USA Today: Trump's Right About Drug Prices
Donald Trump has certainly gotten the pharmaceutical industry's attention with his ruminations about drug prices. Within 20 minutes of last Wednesday's news conference, in which the president-elect called for the government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies, the industry shed roughly $25 billion in stock value. (1/16)
USA Today: Let Consumers Control Drug Money
The drug prices are too damn high, but having government “negotiate” lower prices is a distraction from reforms that would actually work. To make drugs more affordable, we need not one tough-talking negotiator but 300 million of them. Congress can raise and equip that army by returning to the people the $3 trillion of health care spending that government and employers control, and by eliminating government-imposed barriers to affordable medicine. (Michael F. Cannon, 1/16)
Bloomberg: Biopharma Can't Keep Getting Blindsided By Trump
The day after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, pharma and biotech investors seemed to decide his administration would be one in which scrutiny of drug pricing would vanish and profits would soar. Shares in the Nasdaq Biotech Index (NBI) surged more on November 9 than they had in more than eight years.This dream was a fiction. (Max Nissen, 1/11)
Salon: Donald Trump Vs. Big Pharma: He Can’t Bring Down Prescription Drug Costs Alone
President-elect Donald Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal” details using leverage in business negotiations to contain costs and deliver the goods. Whether Trump wrote his greed-is-good ’80s-era bestseller or not, the book offers a selective glimpse into Trump’s political style. His wheeling-and-dealing background came out again this week when he lashed out at Big Pharma at his Wednesday press conference, accusing the industry of price-gouging the public and promising a new art to that deal. (Angelo Young, 1/14)
Fortune: Trump Drug Price Control Plan Would Revive 'Death Panel' Politics
President-elect Donald Trump sent biopharma stocks into a tailspin Wednesday after asserting that pharma is "getting away with murder" on drug prices during a closely-watched press conference. But Trump's suggestions for keeping these high prices in check through a bidding process for Medicare could re-invigorate the nastiest political debates about "care rationing" that surrounded the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. (Sy Mukherjee, 1/13)
Bloomberg: Trump’s Strategy For Cutting Drug Prices Is DOA
Trump didn’t say a whole lot in his press conference on Wednesday, but his remark that America needed to revise its process for buying pharmaceuticals made some enormous waves. “They’re getting away with murder,” he said. Big Pharma lost almost $25 billion in market value in just 20 minutes. From the size of the market’s reaction, you would assume that pharma must really be getting away with murder. (Megan McArdle, 1/13)
Bloomberg: Merck's Lead In Lung Cancer May Be Unbeatable
Merck & Co Inc. and its immune-boosting cancer drug Keytruda keep putting out market stunners. A clinical trial failure by Bristol-Myers Sqibb Co. in August gave Merck a big head start in treating lung cancer, leaving Keytruda as the only drug of its type available to newly diagnosed patients. And on Monday, Merck announced the FDA had accepted its application to combine Keytruda with chemotherapy to treat a much wider group of patients than it currently does. (Max Nissen, 1/12)
