Bob Herman November 27,
2019
The Senate's
drug pricing bill would likely be better for the pharmaceutical industry than
either President Trump's agenda or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's.
Between the
lines: Industry opposes anything that would hurt its bottom line, but
of those three proposals, the Senate's "is a positive tradeoff,"
analyst Ronny Gal of AllianceBernstein wrote to investors this week.
Between the
lines: The Senate bill could take some political heat off the industry,
while Pelosi's bill and Trump's proposal to tie Medicare's prices to
international prices would make bigger changes to the actual system.
How it works: The
international pricing index and Senate bill both only focus on Medicare, but
would change different parts of Medicare.
·
The international pricing index would lower prices for Medicare
Part B drugs, which are things like chemotherapy and eye drugs that are
administered in doctors' offices. Regeneron, Roche, Amgen and Bristol-Myers
Squibb generate the most revenue from Medicare Part B and therefore are most
invested in killing that proposal.
·
The Senate bill would cap some prices for Medicare Part D drugs
— the ones patients pick up from pharmacies. Celgene, Novo Nordisk,
GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca would feel the most pain to sales, according to
Gal.
·
Because the Senate bill proposes the most temperate changes, the
industry will push for that as the main political vehicle while mitigating the
damage to companies most exposed to Part D.
Both of those
proposals pale in comparison to Pelosi's bill, which would limit prices
in all insurance plans, including the most lucrative commercial business.
·
Pelosi's bill would "be a fundamental change of business
model for the drug industry," Gal wrote, and it's why pharmaceutical
lobbyists and Senate Republicans have said it's a nonstarter.
https://www.axios.com/drug-pricing-proposals-medicare-pharma-companies-a2ab25b5-15f7-4d4e-bbc4-96830c022c07.html
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