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FEEDBACK LOOP/ Looking for Perspective on Must-Attend Events
Some housekeeping items to start the week:
First off, congrats to the Boston University Terriers for winning Hockey East and making the 11-team NCAA women’s hockey tournament. It’s a huge accomplishment for my social media manager and a credit to all the women. On to Madison!
Second, here’s a quick note to let you all know that I’ll be at the Drug Channels Leadership Forum next week. Drop me a line if you’re making that trip, too.
Third, I know that the Drug Channels event is not the only one on the calendar this month (and beyond), so I’d be grateful if you took 30 seconds and filled out this survey on the events you tend to attend. It’ll help me more thoughtfully plan coverage in the future.
INFLECTION POINT/ Senators Push for Details on Pharma-Trump Connections
This feels useless. Three Democratic senators are demanding to know what went down when President Trump and Robert Kennedy, Jr. sat down with pharma execs late last fall. To be clear, I don’t think that better understanding the politics of this issue is useless. It’s just that I suspect there is no there there.
Obviously, the letter is going to get ignored. Kennedy went through a confirmation hearing, and I’m sure that the administration is disinclined to answer more questions.
But, more significantly, it’s not clear that the meeting had any impact on Trump or Kennedy, at least around Medicare “negotiations.” Kennedy’s confirmation hearings were notable in that Kennedy could not reliably differentiate between Medicare and Medicaid. I’m guessing he’s not the guy with the knowledge base to drive the dismantling of the IRA.
Trump, for his part, came out of the Mar-a-Lago sitdown echoing pharma talking points about middlemen, not price controls. And even on that front, when push came to shove a couple of weeks later, PBM reform ended up stripped from the year-end spending bill for Trump/Musk-related reasons. That’s probably evidence that there isn’t some sort of secret alliance here.
In no way should this be taken as a prediction that the Trump administration won’t do something around negotiations. Mehmet Oz gets his turn in front of a Senate committee later this week, when this topic will absolutely, positively come up. And Trump-adjacent policy wonks have some specific ideas on how to kneecap the price-control regime.
But the idea that there wasa backroom deal struck seems a bit far-fetched.
QUICK TURNS: Compounding Bedfellows, PBM Reform Resurrection, and 340B and Blood Funnels
Speaking of PBM reform, Politico said that Senate Democrats are going to push the issue through the chamber via unanimous consent. To quote Chappel Roan: Good Luck, Babe.
Whenever I see name-brand political pundit types shilling for niche issues, I’m always curious about who is buttering their bread. The most recent example is Sean Spicer, who vaulted to a strange blend of famous and infamous as Trump’s first press secretary, way back when. Spicer has an obesity-focused NY Post op-ed slamming the FDA for, um, properly regulating compounding pharmacies, which makes me wonder if he’s consulting on the issue. (Mentioning the Post is an excellent excuse to link to a great John Mulaney clip about the paper.)
I find the lack of media attention around drug-price transparency reports to be a little puzzling/disappointing. So even though the mentions are brief, I appreciate that Zach Brennan at Endpoints provided links to the Sanofi and UCB reports at the end of a piece last week.
Tariffs are a new reason to bring back my favorite politically oriented GIF. I have no idea what’s going on there, and neither do you, probably. But executives have to say stuff about what might come next, and here’s a Bloomberg story with cautious takes from leaders at Novo Nordisk and Galderma.
United bought a company that helps hospitals “optimize” 340B, per a deep look by STAT at all of the stuff United bought/created last year. Because of course they did. During the financial crisis, Rolling Stone published a remarkable line about Goldman Sachs, which was described as a “vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” United getting into the 340B game sure feels like a blood funnel being jammed into something that smells like money.
The CDC is going to study the phantom connection between vaccines and autism. As one wag put it on Bluesky, “I got your waste, fraud, and abuse right here.”
Cost Curve is produced by Reid Strategic, a consultancy that helps companies and organizations in life sciences communicate more clearly and more loudly about issues of value, access, and pricing. We offer a range of services, from strategic planning to tactical execution, designed to shatter the complexity that hampers constructive conversations.
To learn more about how Reid Strategic can help you, email Brian Reid at brian@reidstrategic.com.
