Drug Fix: MFN Finds Mid-Size Companies And More Vaccine Policy Moves

First is MFN.

Maisha, you helped report this story for us.

It looks like the White House finally got these drug pricing deals finished after months of talking about them.

By the way, it's funny because I think we were wondering what happened to these deals recently, and all of a sudden, poof, an update appears.

Yeah, so Kathy and I, we covered that mid-sized biotech companies were talking to the administration.

So a little bit background on most favorite nation pricing, like the concept is that US shouldn't pay more for drugs than any other developed country pays.

So, and by the way, so Trump floated this version of MFN in his first term, but it got tied up legally.

So, and this one is a little bit different.

So as we know, like last year, there were 17 brand drug companies that signed MFN deals with the administration.

And then there were talks that mid-sized companies are also in conversation with CMS.

They're thinking about striking a similar deal with the administration.

So, yeah, we just...

Now, this week, we hear from a pink sheet source that the administration also will announce...

these mid-sized deals with mid-sized biotech companies as soon as Monday, August 31st.

And it will have similar structure to the 17 deals that we saw, but I'm not yet sure if it's going to have all of the components of what the 17 brand drug companies had when they signed the deal with the the White House, with the administration.

So, yeah, that was one of the things I was curious about because, you know, the deal terms have been, you know, for the original 17 deals were not really widely, you know, circulated, I guess.

You hear a few kind of things here and there, like, about what's in them.

But, you know, small and mid-sized companies are not, you know, large, like large, the largest pharma companies, they can't behave the same way.

So one of the things I wonder about, and I'm curious if they get into this in the announcement, you know, if it happens on Monday, whenever it happens, is, you know, kind of what adjustments the White House had to make to the original deals to get these smaller companies to agree to do it.

Because, you know, I mean, there have been things brought up like small companies not controlling, you know, their ex-US rights or not all of them, and we're not having, you know, the financial ability to deal with issues that would come along with a lot of these issues and so forth.

You know, I was wondering if, you know, I mean, I guess, I mean, I assume we're thinking that these deals are going to be different, you know, from the originals, right?

Yeah.

And so, you know, we, We covered also that the mid-sized biotech company, the alliance for mid-sized biotech companies, most of them are US-based, they communicated these problems with CMS.

So that's what I heard so far.

And we don't know the details of these upcoming deals, but for sure, like, I am having similar kind of structure for the 17 brand drug companies that signed deals with the president.