A new White House report suggested a number of options for decreasing drug prices, including greater competition in the pharmacy benefit manager industry, faster FDA clearance for second or third products in drug categories lacking generics, and an “enhanced trade policy” for countries that underprice U.S. drugs. The report also called for:
- Faster generic drug approvals;
- Reducing the cost of the FDA approval process;
- Increasing biosimilar competition for expensive biologic drugs; and
- Reducing high prices induced by Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement policy.
The White House report is the first set of concrete policy ideas from the Trump administration that has promised to take on the issue this year. Separately, HHS Secretary Alex Azar testified this week on the President’s drug pricing proposals in the budget for Medicaid and Medicare, with Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (R-UT) imploring Sec. Azar “to take care to strike a balance between access and innovation.”
