President Trump Addresses Need for More Competition, Lower Drug Costs

Some of the steps it outlines are rebate-sharing in Medicare drug plans, promoting generics and copycat version of biologic drugs and requiring drug manufacturers to publish list prices for drugs in television advertisements. Poll after poll shows the vast majority of Americans, across the political spectrum, are demanding action from Congress to address this problem. So requiring them to share the discount could raise rates for everyone, while benefiting the relatively few patients who require high-cost, brand name drugs.

The result, in part, is the highest drug prices in the world. Meanwhile some companies have been buying up once-cheap older drugs and hiking prices by 1,000 percent or more.

Meanwhile, the Food & Drug Administration is focusing on reducing prices by increasing competition from generic drugs and so-called biosimilars, which are almost identical to super-expensive biologic medicines. Medicare Part D drug spending grew almost 45% between 2013 and 2016, and more beneficiaries are reaching catastrophic coverage of at least $5,000 out-of-pocket costs-up 50% from 2013 to 2016, according to a new study from Avalere. Some are pretty technical, such as giving the Medicare Part D prescription drug program authority to negotiate lower prices for certain drugs under Medicare Part B. Others are more aspirational and politically controversial, such as Trump’s broadsides against foreign countries that supposedly “free ride” by paying less money for drugs than Americans through their single payer systems.

However, experts say foreign pricing is not a major influence on U.S. costs and changing it will not help Americans. Last year, these companies spent almost United States dollars 280 million on lobbyists. AARP also produces the nation’s largest circulation publications: AARP The Magazine and AARP Bulletin.

However, it stops short of allowing Medicare to directly work with manufacturers on prices, something Trump had called for on the campaign trail but Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, a former Eli Lilly executive, has opposed. The company has a cholesterol drug that costs $14,000 a year.

It also excludes an idea that Trump has championed in the past and was most feared by industry: allowing the government to negotiate drug prices on behalf of the Medicare program.

Express Scripts and CVS Health, both PBMs, praised Trump’s efforts to tackle prescription drug costs.

It will instead focus on increasing private competition to lower pharmacy costs for consumers.

But with American patients in need and the status quo unsustainable, President Trump has told us to go much, much further.

As a candidate, Trump railed against the pharmaceutical industry, accusing companies of “getting away with murder”. President Trump has seen to it that we are not just going to talk about this problem – we are going to fix it, and soon. The FDA will continue what it started with DCAP by taking new steps to address the significant health challenges we face and extend that momentum to implementing new measures as part of a forthcoming Biosimilar Action Plan that aims to facilitate the development and approval of biosimilars-which will help address patient access to costly biological products that can treat a range of chronic and life-threatening conditions.

The result is that the USA spends more on medicines than any other nation. Importantly, this strategic direction will move the Food and Drug Administration down its current path of trying to increase competition by paving the way for more approvals of generics, biosimilars and biologics, Klasmeier added. The sentiment seemed to assuage investors in the company, which saw its shares (NYSE:CVS) rise by about 3.1 percent to close at $64.40 on Friday.

But the benefit managers and insurers say that they use rebates to lower health care premiums overall and that doing away with them would drive up costs.

The blueprint seeks feedback on some issues, including whether there are policies the US can pursue that would protect brand-name drug patents in other countries, some of which don’t have a system to prevent competition for a period of time to help drugmakers’ recoup research and development costs.