Economy U.S Government vs. Big Pharma: Drug industry poised for rare political loss on prices

[Arkain2K]

Pfizer puts price hikes on hold after Trump complains
by Danielle Wiener-Bronner and Tami Luhby | July 10, 2018

​

In a surprising turnaround, Pfizer said Tuesday that it will defer raising prices on multiple drugs after heavy pressure from President Donald Trump.

The pharmaceutical company's announcement came after Trump tweeted that he spoke with Pfizer's CEO and his own Health and Human Services secretary, Alex Azar.

"Pfizer is rolling back price hikes, so American patients don't pay more. We applaud Pfizer for this decision and hope other companies do the same," Trump tweeted.

The company said it made the decision "following an extensive discussion with President Trump."

Pfizer, which hiked prices on nearly three dozen drugs on July 1, said it will give the administration more time to work on its plan to overhaul the pharmaceutical supply chain.

The prices will revert to what they were before July 1 "as soon as technically possible," according to Pfizer. The new prices will remain in place until the end of the year or until Trump's plan goes into effect, whichever is sooner, the company said.

The day before, Pfizer stressed that it was only "modifying" the prices of about 10% of its medicines and vaccines, including reducing the cost of some. It also noted that most insurers and patients don't pay the list price thanks to manufacturer rebates.

The pharmaceutical industry has been under assault in recent years because of the ever-increasing cost of drugs. Trump has ramped up that pressure. He promised to lower drug prices during his presidential campaign and after he took office.

However, his administration did little until May, when it rolled out its 44-page "blueprint" for increasing competition, reducing regulations and changing the incentives for all players in the drug industry.

While the plan contains some concrete steps the administration can take to lower prices, it was criticized by industry observers as containing more ideas for consideration than actions to take. Also, experts said it didn't do enough to rein in the list prices of drugs.

Still, the president kept focusing his attention on the issue. At the end of May, he said big drug companies would announce "voluntary massive drops in prices" in two weeks. That didn't happen.

But then on Monday, Trump took up the matter again.

"Pfizer & others should be ashamed that they have raised drug prices for no reason," he tweeted. "They are merely taking advantage of the poor & others unable to defend themselves."

Speaking with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday, Azar called the company's decision "constructive, professional [and] appropriate."

Pfizer is far from alone in raising pharmaceutical prices this year. Manufacturers increased the cost of 104 drugs in June and the first two days of July alone, according to a Wells Fargo Securities report.

And while Pfizer agreed to temporarily halt its July increase, it did not roll back the price hikes it implemented early this year on popular medications like Viagra, Lipitor, Xanax and Chantix.

The list price for Viagra, for example, was $1,846 for 30 pills last year, but then Pfizer raised it 9.44% on January 1 to $2,021. The July 1 hike brought it to $2,211. Tuesday's move will take it back down to $2,021.

Some industry experts were not impressed with Pfizer's move, since it only temporarily delayed the most recent price hike. Calling it a "nice gesture," Stephen Schondelmeyer, a drug price expert at the University of Minnesota, questioned whether the company would reverse earlier increases or forgo future ones.

It also remains to be seen whether the move by Pfizer, one of the nation's largest drug maker, will prompt its peers to do the same.

https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/10/news/companies/pfizer-trump-price-hikes-deferred/index.html

 

[curryjunkie]

"rolling back"

 

[Happy Man]

Thank God, a victory for all Americans.

I finally get to do it........

#Winning

I'll even take small victories. Better than small defeats

 

[Arkain2K]

President Trump Proposes to Lower Drug Prices by Basing Them on Other Countries’ Costs
By Robert Pear | Oct. 25, 2018

President Trump spoke about prescription drug prices, alongside Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, on Thursday.​

WASHINGTON — President Trump proposed on Thursday that Medicare pay for certain prescription drugs based on the prices paid in other advanced industrial countries — a huge change that would save money for the government and for millions of Medicare beneficiaries.

As part of a demonstration project covering half the country, Medicare would establish an “international pricing index” and use it as a benchmark in deciding how much to pay for drugs covered by Part B of Medicare.

“This is a revolutionary change,” Mr. Trump said in a speech on Thursday at the Department of Health and Human Services. “Nobody’s had the courage to do it, or they just didn’t want to do it.”

Mr. Trump said his plan took aim at “global free riding” that forces Americans to subsidize lower drug prices in other countries.

“Americans pay more so that other countries pay less,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump has the authority to use the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation created by the Affordable Care Act to implement the proposal. That agency has wide discretion to conduct demonstration projects. The Trump administration will accept public comments before starting the project.

Mr. Trump’s announcement came after his administration released a government study that found that Medicare was paying 80 percent more than other advanced industrial countries for some of the most costly physician-administered medicines.

“The current international drug pricing system has put America in last place,” Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, said in unveiling the report on Thursday.

Mr. Trump cited the government’s international drug-pricing report in his speech on Thursday. The report compares prices charged by drug manufacturers in the United States and 16 other countries for 27 drugs that are covered by Part B of Medicare.

“Over all,” the report said, “prices and reimbursement rates for Part B drugs are significantly higher for U.S. providers than purchasers outside the U.S. Medicare could achieve significant savings if prices in the U.S. were similar to those of other large market-based economies.”

In a Twitter post, Mr. Azar said, “Medicare was found to be paying the highest price for 19 out of the 27 drugs studied.” In only one case was Medicare paying less than the international average, he said.



Mr. Trump campaigned for president on the promise of allowing the government to negotiate drug prices, but then backed away from that position when he unveiled his first drug-price proposals last spring. The new proposal moves back toward that plan, not by having the U.S. government negotiate drug prices but by having the government piggyback on the price negotiations of other governments.

Many nations also consider the price of a medicine in other countries when establishing prices for their own citizens. Drug companies and other critics dislike such “international reference pricing.” If adopted here, they say, it would, in effect, import drug price controls from other countries to the American market.

Medicare generally pays 106 percent of the “average sales price” for drugs that patients receive by infusion or injection in doctors’ offices. Medicare drug spending has been growing rapidly — at an average rate of about 9.5 percent a year since 2009, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent agency that advises Congress.

Obama administration officials were also troubled by the rapid growth of spending for drugs covered by Part B of Medicare. In March 2016, they proposed a nationwide experiment to reduce payments for many of these drugs. But they scrapped the plan nine months later after it was criticized by pharmaceutical companies, doctors, patients and members of Congress from both parties, who said it could jeopardize access to important medicines.

About two-thirds of Part B drug spending is for biotechnology drugs known as biologics.

Countries included in the Trump administration’s drug price comparisons, besides the United States, were Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/us/politics/medicare-prescription-drug-costs-trump.html

 

[Arkain2K]

 

[Lead]

Interesting....

 

[Lead]

Did they really play rocketman at the beginning of that video?

 

[curryjunkie]

talk is cheap..

 

[Gunny]

But orange man bad?

 

[Arkain2K]

But orange man bad?

Very bad.

Sticking it to Pharma—With Competition
A record pace of generic drug approvals is reducing prices.
By The WSJ Editorial Board | Nov. 19, 2018

​

The FDA has over 20 months of the Trump Administration approved an astounding 1,617 generic drugs, which are identical to branded versions but sold at commodity prices after patents expire. That works out to 81 a month on average—an 17% increase over the preceding 20 months. The Council of Economic Advisers in October tried to tally the savings from new entrants: $26 billion.

What’s remarkable is that FDA is speeding up even as fewer patents are expiring. The reason is Commissioner Scott Gottlieb’s prescriptions: clearing out an application backlog, putting priority on drugs where competition is limited, and more.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sticking-it-to-pharmawith-competition-1542674076?mod=e2fb

 

[Big Nasty Edison]

Its great that this admin has done something to lower drug costs. Hope Trumps admin can keep up things like this.

 

[Strychnine]

I agree with President Trump on this and it is a GOOD thing!

 

[MMAViewer]

He's just upset that he's not getting a cut of the action.

Couldn't agree more, but I'm all for this if he does it and I dont care why. This is one of the things I hated about the ACA. It did not address this and it is a glaring issue.

 

[method115]

Now, let's see if he'll put his money where his mouth is...

What do you mean isn't he already doing it?

 

[Strychnine]

What do you mean isn't he already doing it?

I misread it... I edited my post. Thanks!

 

[godking]

Good for Trump. And i openly admit to it.

 

[Arkain2K]

HHS Secretary Alex Azar: Trump's moves are 'ultimate nightmare' for Big Pharma
By Tom Howell Jr. - The Washington Times - Friday, October 26, 2018

Health Secretary Alex Azar said President Trump’s bid to tie what the U.S. government pays for certain Medicare drugs to what other nations pay won’t cripple innovation or access to vital treatments, even if the plan is one of Big Pharma’s “ultimate nightmares.”

“I can tell you because it used to be my job to have pharmaceutical nightmares,” Mr. Azar, a former executive at Eli Lilly USA, told the Brookings Institution.

“Change is coming,” he told drug companies. “You cannot stand by or defend the status quo on drug pricing.”

Mr. Trump says the plan to peg prices under Medicare Part B to an “international pricing index” will correct a “rigged” system in which Americans effectively subsidize drug innovation and lower costs in nations like Germany, Japan and Canada.

The payment experiment will be phased in beginning in late 2019 or 2020 and affect half of the country.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a major lobbying group, is crying foul, saying the proposal will upend a competitive and innovative marketplace in the U.S., where patients get access to cutting-edge drugs faster than other developed countries.

“The administration is imposing foreign price controls from countries with socialized health care systems that deny their citizens access and discourage innovation. These proposals are to the detriment of American patients,” PhRMA President and CEO Stephen J. Ubl said.

Yet Mr. Azar disagreed, saying Big Pharma is “never going to walk away” from the huge U.S. market and will have to either raise prices abroad or find space in their budgets to adjust to the new reality.

He said under the model, the U.S. will still be paying about 126 percent of foreign prices.

Mr. Azar rejected the idea that Mr. Trump — who balked at Democrats’ pleas to set prices directly — is outsourcing the U.S.’s responsibility for maintaining low prices to other countries.

He said Part B already pays a set a price to doctors without the ability to negotiate, like Medicare’s Part D program does.

The problem right now, he said, is “it’s just a really stupid way to set prices.”

The administration says its plan should save the government $17 billion over five years, and seniors should see lower costs at the pharmacy counter under the plan, because their out-of-pocket costs are pegged to the overall price.

“This is a huge win for patients,” Mr. Azar said.

Part B is the segment of Medicare covering drugs dispensed in doctors’ office and outpatient hospital clinics — not ones found at pharmacies.

Under the new model, vendors will purchase drugs and dispense them to physicians, so doctors don’t buy them directly.

Doctors should be focused on treating patients, and not “not floating capital for pricey drugs,” Mr. Azar said.

Also, the government will pay a flat flee to doctors and hospitals who store and administer Part B drugs, rather than a percentage of the price, so providers aren’t tempted to use higher-cost medicines.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/26/alex-azar-hhs-secretary-donald-trumps-moves-are-ul/

 

[Plissken]

Well I do have a prescription that went from $30 to $9, not sure if that has anything to do with his policies, but it's certainly nice. It was as much as $50 early on during the Obama administration and that's with really good insurance coverage.

 

[Prutfis]

Great news everyone. Now if they would just add the collective bargaining power of 320 million people (universal HC)

 

[Arkain2K]