Trump Urged by Democratic Senators to Keep Lowered Drug Prices

A group of lawmakers are urging President Donald Trump to reject pharmaceutical companies’ efforts to pause the Biden administration’s drug-price cuts.

Trump should use his deal-making skills to “flat out reject any request to end negotiations from giant pharmaceutical makers that have spent decades putting profits over patients,” Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote in a letter to the president seen by Bloomberg.

“There is no legal basis for any pause, and allowing giant pharmaceutical companies to pressure you into one would dramatically increase costs for over 60 million Medicare beneficiaries and betray your own campaign promises,” the lawmakers said.

The letter follows Bloomberg’s reporting last week that drugmakers including Eli Lilly & Co. are planning to ask the Trump administration to pause price negotiations. Under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the US government is allowed to pay lower prices for older medications in the Medicare health program for seniors.

Drugmakers have fought the negotiations with suits and claims that the lower prices deplete them of incentives to develop new medicines. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry’s lobbying group, has called the negotiation process “dangerous” and said it discourages companies from making pills because they’re subject to negotiation sooner than complex injectable drugs.

On Jan. 17, the Biden administration released the list of 15 drugs it targeted for price cuts, including best-selling diabetes and weight-loss medications Ozempic and Wegovy. The negotiated prices won’t take effect until 2027 and it will be up to the Trump administration to implement them.

Trump recently met with executives from Lilly and Pfizer Inc. at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. Yet the lawmakers cited Trump’s past support for lowering prescription drug costs. They also said his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., signals a “desire to go after the pharmaceutical industry.”

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer with no background in health care or medicine, emerged as one of the prominent voices in the anti-vaccine movement during the Covid-19 pandemic. He’s been critical of the pharmaceutical industry and has leaned into addressing the root cause of diseases through America’s food system.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Madison Muller in New York at mmuller84@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Cynthia Koons at ckoons@bloomberg.net

Anne Cronin, Catherine Larkin

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