PhRMA’S 2017 WISH LIST FOR TRUMP — Could the past be prologue if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 election? Shortly after taking office in January 2017, Trump had a “follow-up assignment” for drugmaker lobby PhRMA after his initial meeting with industry CEOs: Come up with a plan to address prescription drug costs. The group’s five-point plan provides a window into how drugmakers hoped to influence Trump — who initially backed Medicare negotiations on the campaign trail in 2016 — during the early days of his term in the White House. PhRMA did not respond to requests for comment. Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the former president “is extremely aware” of the “high price of healthcare and insurance.” “By increasing transparency, promoting choice and competition and expanding access to new affordable healthcare and insurance options, President Trump will make healthcare affordable again,” Leavitt said. Two of the five asks remain top priorities for the drug industry today: targeting the scope of pharmacy benefit managers’ role in drug pricing and whether a program intended to help hospitals provide drugs to low-income patients that the industry argues has outgrown its initial scope. The five points the industry wanted to present to Trump officials: — “Value Based Contracting — FDA piece is around communications” — “Promote Generic Entry — mostly FDA” — “Improved Trade Agreements” — “Regulatory Relief — Some FDA, but a lot of 340b” — “Middlemen Share the Savings— CMS” That’s according to an email — obtained by consumer advocacy group Public Citizen via the Freedom of Information Act and shared with POLITICO — sent by then-PhRMA deputy vice president Alicia Hennie to Anna Abram, who was a special assistant at HHS during the early months of the Trump administration. Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s access to medicines group, claims that PhRMA’s five priorities were echoed in a draft executive order that leaked later that year and was subsequently criticized for being too friendly to the pharmaceutical industry. “Comparing PhRMA’s message to Trump’s draft order suggests to us that the former president made PhRMA’s wish list the core of his drug-pricing plans,” Maybarduk said. But Joe Grogan — who worked in Trump’s Office of Management and Budget as an associate director of health programs at the time and met with PhRMA in 2017 about the plan — pushed back against that characterization. “I met with everybody: people who hated PhRMA, people like PhRMA, BIO, individual companies, patient groups,” Grogran said. “Nothing in the list is particularly shocking, and it’s my read that PhRMA only got two of the five, and [generic competition and value-based contracting] shouldn’t be controversial at all.” IT’S TUESDAY. WELCOME BACK TO PRESCRIPTION PULSE. One of your authors is not sure what to make of “Megalopolis” after a weekend hate-watch. Send tips to David Lim (dlim@politico.com or @davidalim) and Lauren Gardner (lgardner@politico.com or @Gardner_LM).
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