An article to transparentize corporate business practices to bring drugs to market will help explain high drug prices. Publishing SEC filings that include: a drug’s research history, investors, partnerships the buying and selling of the international patents and interviews with foreign patent holders etc. In researching an Alzheimer’s dimebon clinical trial—14 Russians with cognitive problems—13 without family members were recruited from a boarding house by a Russian research institute, The institute purpose was to develop profitable drugs. Russian boarding house employees were notorious for stealing the elderly’s pensions. From there, partnerships and patents were bought and sold. Finally Pfizer paid $225million to bring the drug to market. European Patent holders told me they knew that the drug wouldn’t work. Because of the fortunes spent, more money was invested in clinical trials to try to get the drug to market. I'm guessing high stakes horse trading of drug patents is not unusual.
4
No explanation is given for how Daraprim, which someone was able to manufacture cheaply and earn a profit, suddenly zoomed up in price. It is not because drugs just naturally rise in price when patents expire; in fact, the opposite should happen as competition enters the market.
Instead, Shkreli bought the company that made it. He could do so relatively cheaply because it wasn't an especially common or profitable drug. Then he jacked up the price BECAUSE HE COULD. Patients who need this drug have no alternative, since most competition left the market when it was cheap. This behavior should be illegal.
15
You want one simple plan that will work? Eliminate all third party insurance, make all drugs cash only. You would see prices plummet. No one will pay $300 for a vial of insulin or $500 for an inhaler.
13
The problem with these ridiculous academic proposals is that the market mechanism they describe DOESN'T actually exist.
Without external pressure, no one in the pharma industry is going to look for a cheaper way to make a drug. Does one exist? Who knows? But we will NEVER know if no one ever tries.
The whole system is rigged to drive prices higher. Time to face reality.
10
How we love to complicate. First, in a free market economy the US Government should not be blocking consumers from importing medications from abroad and, second, the Congress which collects $970 million in donations annually from Big Pharma, should not be blocking HHS from negotiating better prices for drugs under Medicare. Let's start with that. Then, let's see some really serious government investment in research to fill in the gaps in drug development that put us all in peril.
If European Governments, Canada, Australia, etc. can all provide a broad range of medicines to their taxpayers at very reasonable prices, are the author and all the other apologists for the current corrupt system not bright enough to figure out how to do the same for Americans?
28
Very informative; information that is quite likely not known by most people. While it does explain problems from the manufacturer's point of view, I am not seeing enough efforts by manufacturers to lower their profits in favor of lower prices. I am inundated with pharmacological ads during TV new programs, etc. Perhaps if those companies spent less on advertising and more on price stability, we could get somewhere.
10
Illuminating writing by Austin Frakt. It's a difficult problem, because many of these drugs are critical to life, or quality of life. It's not like buying a car, where there are many choices and reviews. One doesn't need a Bentley to have a good car. But some of these drugs are required Bentleys.
What Austin's article *is* discussing is that a free-market model isn't working in the high-price pharmaceutical arena. There aren't a dozen types of a critical biologic to chose from. So without the tools of government intervention (darest we say "socialized medicine"?) we lack controlling mechanisms on prices.
When things in the commercial world are that expensive but necessary, we come up with mechanisms like mortgages, loans and insurance. These could drive up the cost of the products, but we accept the monthly fees. Loans have enabled educational costs to rise. Health insurance keeps our record health costs up there.
Yes, perhaps the Netflix model will sustain the healthcare cost bubble that we are all in. Pharmaceuticals, and healthcare itself, are held over workers' heads as a requisite price to participate in this culture. They further radically increase the wealth of the top 1% while the rest of us merely tread water. It's what we believe in as a society.
5
Those who say something can't be done seldom get in the way of those doing it unless there's major corporate funding of the naysayers every step of the way.
4
So the article says... nothing can be done! Nothing. If we control some prices, there will be scarcity... If we don't do anything, nobody can afford it...
Of course something will have to be done. Either pharma accepts commonsensical regulations and recover some of the sense of decency they should have, or they will have to deal with the barbarians at the gate.
8
Free markets already have taught us that the lowest price will be the one arrived at my market forces.
Instead, the government messes with prices. It sets prices; it gives patent monopoly protection BEYOND the 20 years that should be allowed. It prevents the import of drugs. The FDA approval process costs billions. And then it pays for most drugs via insurance so that consumers don't feel the price-value.
Go ahead and hope that central planning by the biggest, most powerful monopoly (government) will resolve the complexity of health care and pharma.
3
@David
"Free markets already have taught us that the lowest price will be the one arrived at [by] market forces."
This premise is just - professional economic term here - NUTS. The pricing game is already centrally planned, entirely rigged, controlled by the few major Pharma vampires. Advanced industrial democracies handle this better than US, perhaps as their legislatures are not addicted to corporate funding. But this is so patently obvious as to be tedious in umpteenth reiteration here.
14
I thank the author for outlining the complexity of drug pricing, though it is obvious from comments that the general public wants an easy solution to what is a very refractory problem. There is a parallel to Medicare for All: Americans may want Medicare for All but they would not want the consequences should it be implemented. The author is correct about drug shortages. At this time there is a drug for anxiety that is no longer being manufactured because no profit can be made. Like it or not, Americans, in paying the high prices that they do, subsidize the rest of the world. European drug companies that charge low prices in their own countries are happy, in the U.S., to charge what the market will bear. As the author points out not all drugs are created equal, and one pricing policy is doomed to fail. And we are discovering that generic drugs are not the panacea we had hoped. We are paying a price for low prices for certain drugs manufactured in India, where substandard conditions have been revealed in a recent book. Furthermore those who would apply a cost/benefit analysis to the FDA approval process are up against those desperate for a new drug applying pressure to the FDA to speed up the process. All of this said, there is a need for reform. The pricing of insulin, for example, is completely unacceptable. But those looking for the one-size-fits-all solution will be disappointed.
6
Conservatives say you should be able to buy your education wherever you want. Why not be able to buy your drugs from any country you want. ((I'm not trying to make this political, but something that all political sides should easily agree on.) Similarly, our economic rules allow people/companies who buy stuff in large volumes (Walmart as an example) to hold down prices. Medicare should be compelled to do the same - if it's drugs, MRIs, etc.
Big Pharma companies are very inefficiently managed - they don't have to because market pressures don't apply to them as protected by their lobbyists. I had a friend at a big Pharma company who was told my management he needed to cut his department from about 30 employees to 20. I asked if he could run it with 20 and he said he could run it with 12. If they are forced to lower prices, they will figure out a solution as all companies in competitive markets need to do.
6
@ADP The government ensures it's not a competitive market, that prices are not set by the market, uses patents and import restrictions and of course sets the price it will pay and let's other people's insurance make up the difference.
3
Is there some reason this author neglects to mention public financing of drug research, as a way of controlling prices?
Or is that too easy?
13
Governments with universal healthcare systems are the ones who are most equipped to 'fix' this problem with various policies. There is no one-size-fits-all. Our approach is gathering steam in Europe and let's see what the impact will be: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-drugs-affordable-again-ingmar-de-gooijer/
3
The answer is direct public funding for research. This would make every new drug the price of generics, but don’t expect a corporate media pundit to mention that solution.
They would rather protect the profits of big pharma than help tens of millions of people afford their medications.
5
@Ed Watters Rather than add tyranny (private research is not bad), why not just limit their patents to 20 years. Like copyright law, the actual big monopoly with full coercive powers (government) is destroying free markets and preventing us from making generics sooner and importing as desired.
2
In the 1970's, when OPEC manipulation drove up the price of oil to the point that American producers could make money from relatively low yielding wells, an "excess profits tax" was used to mitigate the effect of large increases in domestic oil prices. Why not use the same approach with excess profits garnered by Big Pharma's price gouging?
3
We don't have a problem with the drug prices. We have a problem with healthcare costs of which the drug costs are about 12%. We have a perception that if the drug prices are lowered things with the system as a whole will magically improve - they will not, and actually can get worse since the pharmaceuticals are the least costly way of extending people's lives and treating the disease. Anything that slows down innovation there is bad for the overall healthcare expense.
The root cause of the problem that we have with drugs is that most insurance policies are structured so that people typically pay out-of-pocket a much greater share of their cost than for any other medical product or service. No one seems to care that an MRI on average costs 8x less in Japan than in the U.S. (much greater difference than with the pharmaceuticals) while MRI machine costs exactly the same to buy - because out of pocket we pay what we think is reasonable for such a procedure. OTOH, because our out of pocket drug costs are so high we consider them to be a ripoff by the industry.
9
Just let me import my own from the EU and Canada and submit the bill to my insurance provider. I'll save us both money.
10
The solutions for generics do seem quite simple, and it would make sense to address these since the single-manufacturer price gouging for decades-old drugs is a new phenomenon which has no relation to or bearing on research spending.
Recognizing overseas suppliers from countries with rigorous control regimens, as noted in the article, would be a rather easy first step I would have thought.
3
Just have in mind that the annual profit of Apple is greater than of 10 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world together. While I love my iPhone, there are many smartphone producers with much lower profit margins. Also, I tend to think that the innovations brought by biology are more important for the mankind than those from the industrial design. I would love to live to 100 and be in a decent health when I am 100. I'd rather pay to have the innovative drugs developed and commercialized than for a new gadget that gets outdated in 36 months.
5
A single-payer health system would help solve the problem as the drug companies would have to negotiate with the government directly. Insurance companies and drug companies setting drug prices makes little sense. Who is negotiating for the patients? No one.
7
Will we finally admit that there is not, and can never be, anything like a functioning market in Medicine? The ideas involving tweaking incentives, cajoling, and begging pharmaceutical executives are hopeless. There is a reason Shkreli got involved with pharmaceuticals, it was because his fund had failed and he thought drugs were where he could make a quick ruthless buck to pay back creditors. And he was right. This only seems like an intractable problem if you ignore what has worked in every other developed country. Price controls based on a drug's health benefit.
6
Nine of the top 10 drug companies spend more on promotion and advertising than on research and development. Clearly that's one reason why drugs cost so much.
11
How is it reasonable that drugs cost astronomically more in the US than in other developed countries? Are we paying to subsidize Europe and Canada?
4
@LJ
Yes, we are. Not just Europe and Canada. The entire world benefits from the higher payments made by Americans out of their pockets and the reimbursement from their health insurers.
The best solution would be to develop a global agreement among the industrialized nations on the level of pharmaceutical research spending to be subsidized by each nation. How? The UK has a complex scheme that has worked for decades.
5
Of course there is no simple solution, but that is no excuse for doing next to nothing, which suits the industry just fine.
2
The fact that in New Zealand I can get US manufactured drugs for one-ninth the price (one-twentieth the price if the drug is subsidised for residents and citizens) you get them in the US through our single payer system and our ACC personal injury compensation means insurance and lawyers aren't essentially adding a tax to all the medication, it not only is possible, but essential.
The number of bankruptcies due to medical illness in NZ: 0
The number in US: 530,000+ each year.
Now bring in life-expectancy, death rates from major surgery, and you really start wondering what the US is spending their money on.
18
I heard an excellent NPR piece a few weeks ago about the German system for keeping prescription prices down, implemented in 2011 and working very well. They have an admirable system of oversight and review to assess new drugs, a process for which pharmaceutical companies pay the larger share. There is also extensive communication between the government and insurance companies. And pharma. companies can't just raise the price of a product like an epi-pen because greed inspires them to do so.
5
@Anima Key word here is greed.
2
Here's what I say. Congress can't get the job done because the drug industry is too powerful ($$$). Every man, woman and child in the United States needs to go around Congress and start buying their drugs cross-border. Purchase from Canada and Mexico and whatever other countries sell prescription drugs at a fraction of what we are paying. Let them throw us in jail for taking care of matters that Congress gets paid to avoid.
3
Reduce the period of patent protection so generic drug makers can jump into producing the same medications for less.
5
Nearly all drugs are generic these days, greater than 80% of all prescriptions filled!
If you want the new stuff, then pay for it!
No one offers me a "generic" Porsche....
Drug companies will cease making valuable, life-saving drugs if needlessly restrained.
Who else will make antibiotics?
What other industry save millions of lives every year?
3
@SaviorObama Why do you think drug makers keep supplying drugs to Europe/Australia/Canada/Japan where drug prices are "needlessly restrained" by government price controls? Why don't pharma companies cut off these countries?
Answer: Because drug companies are still making plenty of money selling under such price controls.
8
Is there a single best policy for living a life?
Hand wringing is not the best policy for life.
Analysis paralysis is not the best policy for life.
It is as if no one ever raised an infant into a human. Talk about nuance.
Rubbish! Other countries have solved the problem of high drug prices. It is not rocket science. Think the article expects we must play nicely with big pharma/ crooks with no moral bent. NO! To paraphrase Thurgood Marshall when he talked about racists: you don’t knock at their door, you break it down!!!
3
@Marie Seton
Australia has a PBS (pharmaceutical benefits scheme) offering drugs approved through the TGA (therapeutic goods administration). It is basically a copayment system with the maximum contribution by the user of around $40 per script (presently - indexed each year). The system does not deny exclusivity due to patents but encourages ‘generic’ branding. These drugs are often very much less than the PBS copayment and that reduced price is what you pay. E.g. generic statins cost around Aus $13 per box. Australia is a first world country with little debt problems and very good living standards so it’s not that such a pharmaceutical system is destroying the budget. Maybe something for the US to consider.
4
"There is no single, best policy for drug prices"? Really. How about national healthcare with single-payer?
According to Professor Garthwaite, "..low-priced drugs are alike in that competition is the sole source of downward pressure on prices.." while high-priced drugs lack competition for various reasons, not all of which imply our goal should be to reduce prices."
Yet drug prices, both high and low, are dramatically lower in every other developed country on the face of the planet. And it's not "a few government programs" that keep drug prices low there, but government regulation of drug prices in each country that does the trick.
Frakt claims that, "In some cases, lowering drug prices could invite shortages. "
Please tell us which drugs are in short supply in Western Europe, Canada, Japan or elsewhere that maintain national healthcare systems where drug prices are dramatically lower than in the U.S.?
There are no shortages in countries with national healthcare. Only in America's unregulated for-profit healthcare system do these unconscionable "shortages" exist.
Single-payer now. And let's see The Upshot begin publishing columns that point out how well those systems work.
2
Although issues may be diverse, the common thread seems to be that financial profit doesn't guide the pharmaceutical industry appropriately.
Policy is complex, but principles are basic and deserve to be applied generally. For example, a basic principle should be that healthcare is a right and all are deserving. This sets the stage for a massive upgrade of the power of Medicare and Medicaid to direct policy, starting with the power to negotiate pricing with the pharmaceutical companies. Negotiation has to entail the ability to say no to companies who are plainly exercising monopoly power. That means telling pharma that there is such a thing as a guaranteed maximum price beyond which they cannot raise prices further. It will fair but it will require the means and methods to enable financing and subsidies when and where that's necessary. It will be hard but with the political will to get this done, Democrats will have a campaign issue to win with--if they're serious about governing and bringing home genuine change in America's healthcare system.
3
@Dwight
Your basic principle is debatable. So start there. Be more specific too. Where does healthcare start and end? If I'm 98 and on life support, and you can keep me alive at $15,000 a day with meds and around the clock care in an intensive care unit, do I get that? It's a right after all. Illegal aliens same thing? You get to enter our country freely and tap into the most expensive care in the world. That's a great deal.
But I'm pretty sure those inalienable rights put forth were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . . nothing about healthcare at all. This is a massive cost, and it will sink this country.
Progressives tilting left will give this election to Trump. Just ask Rachel Maddow how election night went. I still watch her video on Youtube. The country is not as liberal as NYT readers might think, since comments tend to slant left consistently. Trump won 85% of the counties in America. Liberals in CA and NY can do a lot of damage, but you don't speak for everyone.
4
Making the well-being of Americans depend on the whims of the pharmaceutical industry is a travesty. Many people do not take the required dosages of medications because of the cost. Meanwhile the shareholders of Pfizer, for example, can enjoy dividends. If these companies are so strapped for cash to produce and develop drugs, maybe they need to look at the dividends they're paying. I don't feel sorry for them. I do feel sorry for the many sick Americans who can't afford the medications that they are prescribed.
4
"There Is No Single, Best Policy for Drug Prices"......
Sure there is.......
How about cheaper ?.......
8
There are two distinct segments for drugs. Brand and Generic. No one can do anything about Brand drug pricing. They are going to be exceptionally high for brand new therapies. Marginally better drugs are also going to be mostly un-affordable. That is how these marginal drugs are priced. Their market is developed countries. These NEW brand drugs are sold at much lower prices to recoup fixed manufacturing cots and but still at profits.
Generics are priced and significantly influenced by PBMs and every middle person involved. Reverse calculations and prices can be used to determine profit margins. https://pharmachemicalscoatings.blogspot.com/search?q=reverse+c .
Pricing has to have separate policies for Brand and Generics. Possibilities exist but the lobbies and politicians will destroy anything and everything constrictive.
Lets adopt Canada's drug pricing program. Its not rocket science, they have already solved the problem.
16
Excuse me there is a simple answer control drug prices just as we control how much utilities can charge for water or electricity. Drugs are just as essential. Why don't they have a regulatory body.
What you report here ... "Martin Shkreli, then Turing’s chief executive, increased Daraprim’s price by more than 5,000 percent, to $750 from $13.50 per pill."
This clearly should be illegal !
6
Drug companies will charge as much as payers will pay. It's as easy as that. And I'm sure there are new exciting drugs being created everyday - which never existed before which can add days or weeks or years to one's life.
But as long as the free market does not dictate drug prices, companies will demand $1,000 a pill as long as someone is paying it. This country is in far worse financial shape than we want to admit - debt wise. We can't afford our current health expenditures. Medicare and Medicaid, Tricare, etc. Then add on the massive tax expenditure for employers writing off the cost of the employer-based health insurance. Hundreds of billions of dollars are lost.
If people were paying for medications out of pocket, every drug everywhere drops in price 95% overnight - because no one will pay $1,000 for an epipen when it costs $2 in epinephrine and $998 in profit. A few drugs might be become harder to find, but government is not the solution to this - since it can be bought, and has been bought. Dems and Republicans. A few cute lobbyists and a few trips and nice dinners, and you get your patent extended and $40,000 a year drug prices approved. Try to get a someone to spend $1,000 for an epipen though even once.
5
@Donald Driver where on god's green earth is there such a thing as a genuinely free market? Everywhere in the civilized world governments command disciplined markets for pharmaceuticals. Even where there is no government single payer like Switzerland, prices for drugs are closely monitored and regulated. Only here in US are monopolists free to gouge. And the reason is that we lack the will to place genuine power in the hands of Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate--and veto exorbitant pricing where necessary.
2
The most basic issue regarding drug prices... and for that matter all of healthcare in America, is that politics and money prevent change. Accommodations to capitalism and free enterprise can be made to achieve the greater goal... a healthier and happier nation.
There are several first-world countries with systems providing their citizens more comprehensive and better healthcare at substantially lower cost. We need only to remove money from politics, demand change, and then emulate or modify existing models. National Commissions to negotiate drug prices have been used successfully in Europe for decades.
While the present system subsidizes the cost of medications and healthcare throughout the world, at the same time, many Americans suffer and die. National health insurance may someday become a reality, but In the meantime, any reasoned approach be it Public Option and/or Obamacare is required.
Republicans have made it clear that they are incapable of, or do not desire, a healthcare system that meets the needs of Americans. Next November will determine the outcome of drug prices and healthcare.
1
Why not? Every single other western country has universal health care, including prescriptions. Why can't the US?
1
I am in favor of private companies in situations where there is an open market, where there is no restraint of trade, where there is competition and where it makes sense (see below. In cases where this does not exist, then and only then should the government step in.
For example, in colonial Philadelphia, there was no fire department. Each fire insurance company had its own private fire department. When you bought insurance, you got a medallion to put on your house. If a fire truck from the Green Tree company came to a burning house that had a Penn Mutual medallion, they would let it burn to the ground. After this happened a few times, a municipal fire department was established, a government fire department
Other examples are police, national defense, roads and bridges, etc. The data today overwhelmingly show that health insurance is one of these markets.
This article points to the idea that drug manufacture is also.
If you are concerned with innovation, consider this. For most drugs the research that discovered them was paid for by the government, either directly or through universities. For example, statins were discovered by 3 Japanese academics.
So if drug research, development and manufacturer were done by the government, innovation would not suffer. It might even pick up since the motive would be to help people rather than to make a profit.
16
@Len Charlap
The US government has a national monopoly in manufacture of nuclear weapons. It could also have a national monopoly in manufacture of selected pharmaceutical agents.
2
If there’s any business that lacks transparency, the pricing of drugs has to be it! Prices can run the gamut. It behooves me how an entity like Good Rx can exist! How with such coupons can prices fluctuate so drastically? Congress needs to investigate this!
6
This is all fine and good until it is you or someone you love who is denied treatment because they can't afford it. My older brother (early 70's) has Crohn's disease. He had previously been on Humira (subsidized by the maker). It worked wonderfully until he contracted a nasty infection and spent weeks in the hospital before it cleared up. He would like to go back on Humira, but they won't subsidize a second time, and he can't afford it (and neither can I). He is essentially housebound and must wear adult diapers as he has little to no control any more.
6
If there is no easy way to reduce drug prices why is it that every other country in the world manages to do precisely that? The reason is of course that only in America do we have this laissez faire, you can charge what the market will bear, approach to life saving medication.
When you have Americans crossing the border into Canada to buy insulin, a long established life saving medication, it should be clear that something has gone seriously wrong. We are not talking about some new wonder drug here.
As pointed out in the article sometimes competition simply doesn’t work yet it is sacred dogma on the right (and of course among the corporate class) that anything else will hamper innovation.
Once again how come negotiation of drug prices works everywhere but here.
Americans should not be the suckers of the world yet somehow we are. If only our politicians had even a fraction of concern for the citizens who voted for that they have for the bottom line of Big Pharma our government might be in a position to take the side of the people.
Every business has a right to make a profit but no business has a right to make a killing—and let’s face it killing is exactly what these pharmaceutical companies are doing.
11
So one-size-fits-all doesn't work. Have we lost the ability to differentiate and provide a solution for each different class of drugs? The rest of the industrialized world manages it.
8
How about a list of how much money each Big Pharma company has contributed to each current Presidential candidate so far? That will tell us a lot about the ability to change the landscape here. We have the best government that money can buy. Nothing is going to change.
14
No mention of human health in this article is telling. How about this. Nationalize drug companies, mandate drug production in the U.S., and spend on new cures and drugs what we now spend on the military. In my book all past profits are owned to the U.S. citizens for the rip off inflicted (ok self-inflicted by the GOP) by drug companies, advertisers, and insurance companies. Drug companies no longer serve cures or health so let's throw out their for profit model.
2
There is one single, best policy for drug prices.
Any one of our peer countries is the best policy, take your pick, unlike our de facto criminal one.
7
If you go into your local grocery store and get a gallon of milk, the price is clearly posted. With medications, as it is with much of the healthcare market, trying to pin down what the price is, is like trying to pin jello on the wall. The dodge of, it's complicated is to me a ruse.
4
Yes, the market for drugs is complicated. But it doesn't act like a true market for one reason: the largest buyer, the U.S. Government, cannot negotiate the prices it pays. That was written into the Medicare Part D law, and it is the one huge lever that can be changed, if we have the political will. And tweets won't do that.
37
Why is there no discussion of traditional public utility regulation of monopoly drug prices. It's been used forever in regulating electric power company rates, providing adequate investment capital and profit at reliable and reasonable prices.
24
Simply adopt an OECD wide pricing policy. Why should Americans underwrite the rest of the developed world so American pharmaceutical and healthcare corporations can retain their Wall Street valuations and investment outlooks. Congress has been captured and held hostage by corporate America and no longer represents the Citizens who supposedly retain the power to tell them what to do.
24
Country and retail Rx spending per capita per year
United States $1011
Switzerland $783
Germany $686
Canada $669
France $553
United Kingdom $497
Australia $427
Netherlands $417
Norway $401
Sweden $351
It's not complicated.
What's required is a representative government that represents its citizens....NOT representing its corporations and well-dressed medical-pharmaceutical extortionists.
What's required is basic government protecting the common good ...NOT protecting the corporate and 0.1% trough of unfettered, unregulated greed over people.
Too bad the author seems not to be fully awake on the subject.
45
Message received. There's no simple way to control prescription drug prices. That said, many other countries manage to do it. Where there's a will, there's a way. Unfortunately, American politicians lack the will to take on Big Pharma. As far as I can tell, President Trump is the only person in Washington who's willing even to try.
7
@Ken Morris, please provide any concrete actions by DJT, other than tweets and random comments, to actually lower drug prices? A President cannot lower prices, other than the bully pulpit, without the concurrence of Congress, who are unlikely to pull in the reins on the Pharma industry.
6
@EDH, To be sure, the President is still trying to figure out how to get things done in Washington. And yes, Congress is in the the drug manufacturers' pocket. But I stand by my statement that Trump is at least willing to try, as evidenced by these two articles.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/trump-actually-decreasing-drug-prices/589096/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/health/drug-prices-rebate-donald-trump.html
2