“Both the administration is trying to look good [and] drug companies are trying to look good,” Yee said.
The price cuts follow President Donald Trump‘s recent pressure on drug companies to lower prices, slamming companies such as Pzifer on social media.
On July 9, Trump tweeted: “Pfizer & others should be ashamed that they have raised drug prices for no reason. They are merely taking advantage of the poor & others unable to defend themselves, while at the same time giving bargain basement prices to other countries in Europe & elsewhere. We will respond!”
Pfizer responded to the tweet by saying that it would postpone price increases until after the CEO and the president spoke.
Other drug companies, Yee said, are now lowering prices because they “do not want to be publicly shamed on Twitter.”
As a result, both Trump and drug companies are “appearing to look good, at least on the surface,” Yee said.
The analyst is not optimistic that any major legislative changes will occur to how drugs are priced. Instead, he reasons, a compromise will be the likely outcome.
“People will feel better about [a compromise],” Yee said. “Midterm elections will pass, and we’ll go into [20]19 feeling a lot better about these things.”
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