Following through on President Donald Trump’s “most favored nation” policy, the HHS is about to drop a drug pricing hammer on the pharma industry. But that doesn’t mean drugmakers will comply.
The policy, issued by an executive order earlier this month in an attempt to bring U.S. drug prices in line with those paid in other countries, asks drugmakers to voluntarily lower their own price tags first. If they don’t, HHS is then directed to “impose” the policy, which is expected to be met with legal challenges, as it was when Trump proposed a similar plan during his first term.
Meanwhile, pharma’s largest lobbying group is aiming to shift the blame for drug prices to pharmacy benefit managers and the 340B hospital drug pricing program. PhRMA launched a new ad campaign last week that called out “markups” from the…