Less FDA for Lower Prices: Trump to Pharma CEOs
President Donald Trump 1/31 offered assembled pharmaceutical CEOs a deal: We shorten your 15-year new drug development time through a huge reduction in unnecessary FDA regulations on that process, and you repay us with a huge reduction in the prices you charge the American people. To sweeten the deal, we’ll use our trade policies to force other countries to ease up on their price controls on your products. That was the between-the-lines essence of the president’s public remarks at the White House before he and the assembled six executives (*) he’d invited went behind closed doors to hear more details and make their views known to the president.
“You folks have done a terrific job over the years, but we have to get prices down for a lot of reasons, and we have no choice,” Trump said. “The pricing has been astronomical for our country... We’re also going to be streamlining the process... so that from your standpoint when you have a drug that you can actually get approved you won’t wait many, many years.” To view a video of Trump’s remarks, click here.
Fostering competition and price negotiating is also high on Trump’s agenda. “I’ll oppose anything that makes it harder for smaller, younger companies to take the risk of bringing a product to a vibrantly competitive market,” he said. “That includes price fixing by the biggest dog in the market, Medicare, which is what’s happening. But we can increase competition and bidding wars big time.”
Trump promised the pharma executives that his administration will make the FDA approval process much faster. He said he will lower taxes and get rid of regulations that are unnecessary. “We’re going to be cutting regulations at a level people have never seen before,” he added.
Trump also guaranteed that he will end “global freeloading. Foreign price controls reduce the resources of American drug companies to finance drug R & D innovation. Our trade policy will prioritize that foreign countries pay their fair share for U.S. manufactured drugs so our drug companies have greater financial resources to accelerate the development of new cures. Right now it is very unfair what other countries are doing to us.”
Trump urged drug makers to move manufacturing back to the U.S. He acknowledged that companies have moved out of the country due to many factors, “but a lot has to do with regulation. There has been a problem getting approval of plants and we will take care of that.”
As to appointing a new FDA commissioner, Trump said he has a “fantastic person that I think I will be naming very soon. You are going to get products either approved or not approved, and its going to be a quick process and not take 15 years, which will make a tremendous difference to you.”
After the meeting, the pharma execs said that behind closed doors they talked about how to make the marketplace work better for competition and patient choice... “We also talked about regulatory reform that can also stimulate innovation,” they said.
* Celgene CEO Bob Hugin, Merck CEO Ken Frazier, Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks, Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez, Amgen CEO Robert Bradway and PhRMA president Steve Ubl.