A group of eight Democratic senators is asking biopharma companies to spill the beans about their private most-favored-nation pricing deals with U.S. President Donald Trump. Led by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, the senators sent letters Dec. 11 to Astrazeneca plc, Eli Lilly and Co., Novo Nordisk A/S and Pfizer Inc. seeking the details of those deals. While it’s difficult to discern how the deals will benefit patients, it’s clear the companies stand to gain a lot from the agreements, the letter asserted.
The industry has been complaining about the drug pricing and reimbursement policies of European governments for years, but only now with the Trump administration’s moves to enforce most favored nation (MFN) pricing and reduce the U.S./EU price gap are governments facing up to the reality that they will have to pay more for new drugs.
Hailing it as a win-win and a historic step forward in fighting chronic disease, the Trump administration announced pricing agreements Nov. 6 with Eli Lilly and Co. and Novo Nordisk A/S that will expand the availability of the companies’ weight loss drugs by cutting prices and, for the first time, providing coverage for the drugs in obesity through Medicare and Medicaid.
Ten years after the first biosimilar launched on the U.S. market, the FDA is taking steps to make biosimilar development and pharmacy substitution more like that of generics, reducing the cost of the drugs in the process. “We want to see more biosimilars. We want to see more competition,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said at an Oct. 29 media briefing in which he announced new guidance to streamline biosimilar development, cut through the red tape and shorten the timeline.
Caught between the rock and the hard place of most-favored nation (MFN) pricing and the threat of a hefty biopharma sector tariff, drug companies marketing in the U.S. are exploring their options. Several large firms already have committed millions and billions of dollars in investment in new or expanded U.S.-based manufacturing facilities to avoid tariffs on finished drugs.
Government and market demands on companies and their pricing strategies have shifted dramatically in the past 10 years and the pricing landscape continues to change, creating uncertain ground beneath developers’ feet. At the BioFuture conference in New York, a panel discussed how big and small companies go about their pricing strategies and build educated guesses into how that strategy might work out in the market.
Two months after it was launched, the wheels are coming off the U.K. government’s 10-year life sciences strategy, with pharma companies withholding promised capital investments in protest at the row over drug pricing. Merck & Co. Inc., Astrazeneca plc and Eli Lilly and Co. Inc. have said they are not going ahead with previously announced investments.
The debate around the U.S. 340B prescription drug discount program is once again heating up in court and in Congress. A day after the American Hospital Association called on the FTC and Department of Justice to investigate alleged antitrust issues with the rebate models a few drug companies have proposed, some members of Congress raised concerns Sept. 9 about how providers are abusing the program. Meanwhile, a U.S. appellate court heard arguments that same day on whether states can speak in the silence of the federal law that created the program more than 30 years ago.
Negotiations between the U.K. government and the pharmaceutical industry have broken down with no agreement over the level of rebates companies must pay back to the government under the current voluntary pricing scheme. The two sides have been locked in discussions since April, when the government agreed to bring forward a midterm review of the Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing, Access and Growth (VPAG).
