If there is nothing better on September 30 White House Trump, standing side by side with PFIZER’s CEO Albert Bourla, announced a contract with a large company described as a “massive victory for the American people.”
Under trading According to the administrationPfizer will sell drugs to Americans with a “deep discount”. Pfizer is that contract “American patients pay lower prices For prescription drugs. ”
Like the cases of many declarations issued at the White House, this trading is much less than keeping an eye. Most Americans or any Americans are suspicious.
We are still where we do not know everything we want to know. It’s unfortunate, but it’s also designed by design.
-Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizens
But for Pfizer, this is a wonderful deal. Do not worry about the news media as the main concessions of the company to help the general consumer, as the White House and Pfizer wanted.
The truth will not reduce profits and profits by providing these “discounts”. But Trump will be exempted for three years with a 100% tariff that threatens to impose pharmaceuticals.
How do you know that Pfizer is a major beneficiary of transactions? The stock price has risen almost 15% over five days since the announcement. Do you think trading that cuts consumer prices for the most popular products will actually produce the stock market? get? me too.
Therefore, it is appropriate to take a closer look at what we know about this deal.
Peter Maybarduk, an approach to the non -profit consumer public citizens’ pharmaceutical groups, said, “We still do not know everything we want to know.” It is unfortunate, but it is due to design. ”
Pfiza and the White House describe trading terms as “confidential”. PFIZER said it would provide “details” as the January implementation date is getting closer. The White House claims that this transaction is a secret because this transaction is traded with other pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Maybarduk said, “It is a loophole that is being negotiated, and many people have not been judged by a loophole.
What we know is not encouraging. There is something here.
This deal has three main components. One says that the company, which promises Pfizer’s “voluntary”, will provide all state Medicade programs with the “most preferred country” price for drugs. In other words, it will match the price imposed on a basket of developed countries. Which country is there in the basket? How is a similar price calculated considering the rebates and discounts commonly found in the pharmaceutical universe?
Because we do not know it, we do not know how much the main Medicade program will save. According to the law, Medicaid, a state program that provides services to low -income Americans, is already paying the minimum drug price of the government program and in some cases lower or lower than many foreign prices.
Medicaid patients are unlikely to be charged. According to the law, their joint payment is $ 4 per prescription, $ 4 for the “preference” drug, and $ 8 for others. In most states, their Joint payment is much lower-In more than $ 3 per script, in some states, 50 cents or 0 low weeks. (Medi-Cal, California’s Medicade Program, does not claim a joint payment for the drug.)
The second component is related to the website, “TrumpRX,” which will be activated someday next year, and the White House said, “We will provide medicines to provide medicines when you sell them directly to US patients.”
But that’s not how Trumprx works. According to the White House, TRUMPRX will only refer to the consumer -centered website that is already operated by individual drug companies for patients who do not have insurance coverage for prescriptions. The White House spokesman said, “The federal government will not run a pharmacy.”
Taking advantage of these discounts is not a real choice for many patients. Because they have to pay in cash, even a discounted price for some drugs still has no low price.
It is fair to say that discounts on some cheap drugs can be important to some patients. Pfizer provided a sample discount for three drugs. Eucrisa, a dermatitis treatment, will fall from $ 692 to $ 162 per month. And for over -active bladder, Toviaz is from $ 290 to $ 42.
However, discounts on other pfizers and products mentioned in the White House announcement It does not make the drug especially inaccessible.. For example, the current price of Xeljanz, which is a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory states, will be discounted, but cash customers will continue for about $ 3,645 a month or $ 43,740 per year.
Do you solve the cost problem of patients without insurance coverage? Asking a question is to answer.
The pharmaceutical company hoped to start this discount site for a patient without insurance a few years ago and promote the impression of patients exaggerated by his list price.
In the case of consumers, the bottom line is that Trumprx does not move the needle at the drug price. Anyway, because drugs have already been guaranteed, they are not related to 90%of Americans who are prescribed through government programs such as their health plans, Medicare, Medicaid and Veterans Affairs.
The third component is associated with tariffs, and Trump threatened up to 100%of Jack for pharmaceutical imports in many overseas countries. In the White House announcement, Bourla said: “Duty is the most powerful tool for motivating actions.”
Pfizer’s transaction sounds more related to protecting profits by preventing tariffs rather than giving US consumers to rest.
Bourla is cited Pfizer’s press release The agreement states that it deals with two important wires, tariffs and prices that suppressed the industry’s evaluation of historical minimum lows.
Is that so? Huizuza’s stock price, which closed for $ 26.43 on Monday, drifted in a low number until Trump’s tariffs were not a problem in most of the 1980s and 1990s. Currently, about 14.1 times the price cuts have fallen to 4.6 times in 2013. In the last 15 years, pharmaceuticals MERCK and ELI Lilly have been drains of about 10 to 30 times. Currently, the multiple of MERCK is 13.7 and Lilly’s 55.37, far from the manufacturing company’s disaster. I asked PFIZER to explain what Bourla mentioned, but I didn’t reply.
In any case, Pfizer recorded more than $ 8 billion in sales last year with $ 63 billion in sales, and profits were 12.6%handsome margins. Bourla collected almost $ 80 million rewards from 2022 to 2024.
Considering Trump’s approach to drug price policy, remember that during his first semester, his efforts aimed to supply their appetite to braggadocio rather than producing a consistent policy. Pfizer looked like a big victory announced in July 2018. Roll back with price rise It has been fermented early for about a week. Trump ran with the ball.Good news for Americans!(Bourla was at the time of Pfizer’s chief operating officer and rose to CEO a few months later.) Merck received its own rollback.
But it was a fantasy. By December, both companies have recovered their prices. They all used the qualifications that were originally inserted into the original notice. Pfizer said it had “postponed” price hikes, but MERCK lowered the average price of the total product portfolio but not actually sold. It reduced the price of Zepatier, one drug, but the Zepatier was also cheaper that sales were effectively 0 during the treatment of hepatitis C.
The claim that Trump’s promise to convey a promise to the US patient first priority is the same as that billions of billions of subsidies have been frozen or canceled for basic science, including other initiatives of life science, especially biological studies. Academic Research is the cornerstone of US pharmaceutical R & D. According to the 2020 study, “NIH funds are a total of $ 23 billion in contributing to all new drugs related to all new drugs approved in 2010-2019.”
Subsidies were blocked in response to annoying accusations because the university did not have enough to fight anti -Semitism or was related to sex research or “diversity”. On September 30, no one in the media asked about the inconsistency between the “breakthrough” transactions that protect the US -based pharmaceutical research and development, and the inconsistency between the reduction of funds for pharmaceutical R & D.
There is no dispute that Americans pay too much for prescriptions. In general, it is more than consumers in other countries. There are many ways to solve this problem through laws and regulations. This is not. This is just a stupid thing that Trump has made a deal that he can boast, but he has found a way to permanently lower US pharmaceutical prices.
Trump did not extract concessions from Pfizer, and the company pressed his concession from him. Savings from tariff exemption will probably surpass profits from profit and price cuts. But Trump complained about what he wanted. American patient? They have almost nothing.
