Trump looking out for the middle man again

Apr 18, 2019, 1:29 PM

"A rare deterrent to limitless drug price increases may die under Trump"

"As drug prices have soared, lawmakers and patient advocates have pushed the federal government to deploy for the first time a powerful deterrent: a legal provision that allows it to suspend a drugmaker’s patent and license someone else to produce the drug.

Now, responding to industry alarm over those demands, the Trump administration is proposing to strictly limit the little-known power.

The move by the Department of Commerce is supported by drug manufacturers and research universities but could undermine Trump’s populist message of attacking drug prices. He declared in his first news conference after his inauguration that drug companies are “getting away with murder” and has called lowering prices one of his “greatest priorities.

The Commerce draft plan would prohibit the government from suspending a drugmaker’s exclusive patent over excessive pricing. It targets an obscure provision of a 40-year-old law called Bayh-Dole that is supposed to protect taxpayer interests in government-funded inventions, such as drugs discovered using federal grant money.

The law gives the government “march-in rights’’ to circumvent a patent (and license someone else to market a drug) if the original therapy is not made available to the public “on reasonable terms.’’ But the phrase “reasonable terms’’ is not defined in the law and for years has been the subject of competing interpretations.

The Trump administration plan, which was published as a “summary of intended actions’’ in December but received little attention, would come down clearly in favor of drug companies and major research universities.

March-in rights have never been used by the government, which historically has encouraged the flow of discoveries to private business for development. The National Institutes of Health, the leading drug research agency, has declined multiple times to use march-in rights to control prices — including under Democratic President Barack Obama."

I thought Trump was supposed to be better than Obummer?

The Big Pharma lobbyists score big with this action by the Trump administration.

flag link

military_tech

thumb_down

thumb_up

Trump looking out for the middle man again

* little man***

We definitely need a clean sweep and a reformed government.

Might happen after the debt apocalypse/collapse

Re: We definitely need a clean sweep and a reformed government.

I'll look into that for real when I'm fresh.

Re: Trump looking out for the middle man again

Re: Trump looking out for the middle man again

TigerBoard POTD