While President Donald Trump publicly called for CMS to negotiate drug prices, top pharmaceutical CEOs said he never brought up government intervention on pricing during a recent closed-door meeting on high drug costs, reports The Washington Post.
Here are three things to know.
1. Amgen CEO Robert Bradway said the group did not discuss the role HHS — which administers Medicare — would play in taming drug prices, according to the report.
2. "We did not have a conversation in there that leads me to believe that they think the solution to that problem is secretarial negotiations," Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier, JD, said in a Jan. 2 investor call. "We know there'll be bills that are introduced in Congress calling for that. But I think the fact of the matter is ... that is not perceived to be the solution to the problem."
3. The discussion centered on patients being able to buy affordable drugs at the pharmacy counter, according to David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly & Co. "We did not get into elaborate policy detail in terms of the U.S. pricing environment," he said.
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