But his proposals hardly put a scare into that system. Ronny Gal, a securities analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein Company, said the president’s speech was “very, very positive to pharma,” and he added, “We have not seen anything about that speech which should concern investors” in the pharmaceutical industry.
Drugmakers’ stocks jumped immediately after the speech, as did the stocks of pharmacy benefit managers, the “middlemen” who Mr. Trump said had gotten “very, very rich.” The NASDAQ Biotechnology Index climbed 2.68 percent on Friday, and companies that make expensive specialty drugs saw their stocks rise, including Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Biogen. Pharmacy benefit managers Express Scripts closed up by 2.59 percent, and CVS Health finished up at 3.17 percent.
Rather than take aim at the pharmaceutical makers, Mr. Trump said his administration would cut out the middleman, provide new tools to private benefits managers in Medicare’s prescription drug program to negotiate lower prices, stop limiting pharmacists from helping patients save money and speed up approval of over-the-counter medicines so that fewer will require prescriptions.
[Read more on President Trump’s proposals for drug prices at home and abroad]
He also directed his trade representative to make it a priority to stop foreign countries from forcing American drug makers to provide medicines at drastically lower prices than in the United States. “It’s time to end the global freeloading once and for all,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump’s plan includes ideas that experts say could help lower drug prices.
“It’s framed as a pro-competitive agenda, and touches on a range of government programs that the administration can change through regulation — so that the president can take unilateral action,” said Daniel N. Mendelson, the president of Avalere Health, a research and consulting company. “The trick here for the administration is to do something visible before the midterm elections, so they can take credit for an action that reduces drug prices for consumers.”