Good morning, everyone, and welcome to another working week. We hope the weekend respite was relaxing and invigorating because that oh-too-familiar routine of meetings, deadlines, and the like has returned with a vengeance. You knew this would happen, yes? To cope, we are relying, as always, on cups of stimulation. Our choice today is peach ginger. Feel free to join us. Remember, no prescription is required. Meanwhile, here are some tidbits to help you along. Best of luck today on your journey, which we hope will be meaningful and productive. And, of course, do keep in touch. …
The White House has drafted legislative text for its drug pricing policy, and officials are in the process of sharing it with more than a dozen major pharmaceutical companies, according to STAT. The legislative text closely follows the outlines of the voluntary deals the administration made with drugmakers. The draft includes a policy that would allow drugs purchased in cash to count toward a patient’s insurance deductible. The Trump administration’s push for drug price legislation is part of a larger effort to get health reforms signed into law. The president’s focus on his affordability agenda in an election year has heightened the profile of the effort. Still, despite the White House digging in to get Congress to pass its plan, lawmakers have little appetite for major changes and there is no clear path to passage.
Eli Lilly wants the U.K. government to regularly raise National Health Service drug prices and phase out a multi-billion-dollar rebate scheme if it is to resume investment, The Financial Times reports. Patrik Jonsson, international businesses president at the company, said he was in talks with U.K. ministers and was “optimistic” about reaching an agreement by the summer for the government to pay more for its medicines. The discussions also cover “innovative” pricing plans that would link payments for anti-obesity drugs to whether patients become well enough to return to work. Medicine prices in the U.K. had been “far too low for far too long, and even with the current threshold, we are not back to where we started more than 20 years ago,” he maintained.
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