It’s hard to know whether to laugh or to despair at Big Pharma’s kowtowing to Donald Trump and the occasionally outraged reaction of his Maga support base.
Pharma giants from Pfizer and Eli Lilly to Roche, Sanofi and AstraZeneca have been queuing up to work with Trump, many in the hope of avoiding potentially punitive tariffs after the US president sent out warning letters to 17 Big Pharma groups.
Anglo Swedish group AstraZeneca agreed at the end of last week to sell some medicines at a discount to the US government’s Medicaid plan in exchange for three years of relief from tariffs.
The deal also envisages up to 80 per cent discounts on some AstraZeneca’s drugs that will be sold direct to consumers through the TrumpRx website, the drugmakers’ chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said at the Oval Office.
The “most favoured nation” deal is along the same lines as one struck by Pfizer that took rivals by surprise at the end of last month by agreeing to lower prescription drug prices in the Medicaid programme to what it charges in other developed countries in exchange for tariff relief.
Pfizer also committed to offering that most-favoured-nation pricing on drugs yet to be launched in the US and will work with TrumpRx.
The deals by the two companies – alongside moves to increase prices elsewhere, including in the UK – now form the template to which all Big Pharma groups are expected to submit over the coming weeks and months.
Thus far, Abbvie, Bristol Myers Squibb and Sanofi are cutting drug prices while Eli Lilly, Roche and Novo Nordisk are looking to cut out middle men and sell direct to customers.
Americans currently pay by far the most for prescription medicines, often nearly three times more than in other developed markets. And, with his bully boy tactics, Trump has managed to bring Big Pharma to heel in a way no one before has tried.
But even that has failed to keep everyone happy, not least when it emerged during an update on his medical health that the US president had taken a booster jab of the Covid vaccine. The reaction from anti-vaccine hardliners in Magaland was deranged and predictable.
With Robert F Kennedy jnr continuing to divorce science from medicines policy, it looks like being a wild ride for Big Pharma over the next few years.
