{"id":85517,"date":"2026-04-21T17:34:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/2026\/04\/21\/at-the-politico-summit-top-drug-lobbyists-called-trumps-efforts-to-codify-his-signed-drug-pricing-deals-a-wrong-policy-recipe\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T17:35:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:35:21","slug":"at-the-politico-summit-top-drug-lobbyists-called-trumps-efforts-to-codify-his-signed-drug-pricing-deals-a-wrong-policy-recipe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/2026\/04\/21\/at-the-politico-summit-top-drug-lobbyists-called-trumps-efforts-to-codify-his-signed-drug-pricing-deals-a-wrong-policy-recipe\/","title":{"rendered":"At the Politico summit, top drug lobbyists called Trump’s efforts to codify his signed drug pricing deals a ‘wrong policy recipe’."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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But he said Congressional codification of the deals, the details of which are still secret, would be a step too far.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere is a huge gap between individual, voluntary, exclusive agreements between the administration and individual companies and codifying the concept of MFN,\u201d UBL said.<\/p>\n

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Instead he stressed the importance of reforming the operations of pharmacy benefit managers \u2013 who serve as intermediaries between drug companies and insurers and employers \u2013 and reforming the 340B hospital program as ways to meaningfully reduce costs for consumers.<\/p>\n

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The outgoing executive, who announced earlier this month that he would The biggest brands leave the drug lobby at the end of the year<\/u>said recent efforts by Congress to reform the way pharmacy benefit managers operate are a good “first step.”<\/p>\n

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But he said more needs to be done to ensure patients benefit from the 340B program, which allows hospitals and other institutions serving low-income communities to buy drugs at a discount from manufacturers.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe industry supports the 340B program, we feel it was well-intentioned,\u201d UBL said. “The problem is that it has grown exponentially over time,” he said.<\/p>\n

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UBL, which joined the drug lobby in 2015 after a decade at the largest medical device trade group, is leading PhRMA to earn $7.6 million in 2024. Under UBL’s leadership, PhRMA’s lobbying spending reached a record high $38 million last year as the group sought to counter efforts by the Trump administration to punish most-favored nation drug pricing policy.<\/p>\n

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The most-favored nation agreement between the administration and drug makers resulted in tariff breaks for those companies, but the strategy has left questions for smaller biopharmaceutical companies that don’t have the ability to easily negotiate their own deals with the government.<\/p>\n

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A longtime critic of allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, UBL argued that efforts to impose what he described as price controls in the law are “going to get worse over time” and may result in less innovation and drug discovery.<\/p>\n

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Last year, Trump’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that the government would look at $12 billion in federal savings<\/u> From the second year of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare drug negotiation program.<\/p>\n

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But he said Congressional codification of the deals, the details of which are still secret, would be a step too far. \u201cThere is a huge gap between individual, voluntary, exclusive agreements between the administration and individual companies and codifying the concept of MFN,\u201d UBL said. Instead he stressed the importance of reforming the operations of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":85521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1670,24047,947,2878,1171,11610,3896,3918,1544,3858,4977,3419,1268,440,1623],"class_list":["post-85517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bible-verse","tag-called","tag-codify","tag-deals","tag-drug","tag-efforts","tag-lobbyists","tag-policy","tag-politico","tag-pricing","tag-recipe","tag-signed","tag-summit","tag-top","tag-trumps","tag-wrong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85523,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85517\/revisions\/85523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}