Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Token Concessions From Pharma Give Trump Victories While Costing Companies Almost Nothing
Politico: How Drug Companies Are Beating Trump At His Own Game
A July tweet from President Donald Trump sent panic through the C-suites of some of the world’s biggest drug companies, prompting Pfizer and nine other companies to roll back or freeze prices. But there’s less to those announcements than meets the eye. The gestures turned out to be largely symbolic — efforts to beat Trump at his own game by giving him headlines he wants without making substantive changes in how they do business. The token concessions are “a calculated risk,” said one drug lobbyist. “Take these nothing-burger steps and give the administration things they can take credit for.” (Karlin-Smith, Owermohle and Restuccia, 8/3)
In other pharmaceutical news —
Bloomberg: Intercept Shares Rise As Drug Sales Recover After Patient Deaths
Intercept Pharmaceuticals Inc. rose to the highest level since September after the company reported increasing sales of its potential blockbuster Ocaliva, a drug previously linked by U.S. officials to the death of 19 people. Sales of Ocaliva, which is approved to treat a rare liver disease called primary biliary cholangitis, climbed to $43.2 million in the second quarter, the New York-based drugmaker said Thursday. That beat analysts’ estimates of $40.3 million, and was up $8 million from the previous quarter. (Kasumov, 8/2)
Stat: Medicare Finalizes Plan To Pay For Some CAR-T Cancer Treatments
Medicare is grappling with how to pay for complicated, pricey new cancer therapies — and a new regulation Thursday suggests health officials are taking a cautious approach. The drugs, called CAR-T treatments, are custom-built for each patient, and teach the body’s immune system to hunt down cancer cells. The Food and Drug Administration has approved just two, and neither is cheap — Novartis’s Kymriah costs $475,000, and Gilead’s Yescarta $373,000. (Swetlitz, 8/2)
