Merck has joined the big drug pricing commitments - but sceptics don't believe it

Merck has pledged to freeze drug price increases with Pfizer and Novar3 because the industry is under pressure from President Trump.
US drugmaker yesterday pledged that average net price growth in its portfolio would not exceed inflation every year.
comes after Pfizer and Novart recently announced they would freeze price increases for the rest of the year, a small trend after Trump and Pfizer CEO Ian Reid made a lengthy phone call last week about drug prices. After the call, Pfizer announced that it would reverse the price increase it had just announced. Mr. Trump, who had earlier put pressure on Pfizer and the industry, angrily said on Twitter that the industry was "just exploiting poor and other defenceless people" while giving the rest of Europe and elsewhere a cheap floor price, "and promising to act." Senators and advocacy groups in Washington, however, are less convinced that the new commitments make sense. In response to Novarma's five-month delay in price increases, Ben Wakana, executive director of Affordable Drugs Patients, issued the following statement Wednesday:
"Let's focus on the reality that pharmaceutical companies don't get credit for keeping prices high." Novart and Pfizer have temporarily delayed regular pricing, and they have not lowered prices or increased access to patients. The standard of credit given to pharmaceutical companies for good banking cannot be so low.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said Pfizer's commitment was "dramatic and does not really and sustainably alleviate patient suffering", while another Democratic senator, Tammy Baldwin, wrote to Ian Reid asking him to commit to a permanent delay in price increases.
announced that it would not raise the average price of its portfolio, meaning it still had room to raise the price of its biggest seller, meaning its revenues were still protected. So, despite its promise to cut its list price for the hepatitis drug Zipatil by 60 percent, sales of the product were so low that the company had no sales in the first quarter of this year after paying rebates to insurers. Merck is cutting prices on six other products that are no longer patented. Pfizer has promised to hold off on price increases until the White House comes up with a promised blueprint to address rising drug costs. The plan includes a wide range of recommendations, including the elimination of some rebates paid to pharmacy benefit managers, emphasizing so-called value-based contracts and shifting some medicines from Part B to Part D.
changes, led by Health Minister Alex Azhar, a former Lilly executive, could erode pharmaceutical profits, but the problem is policy details, which have not yet been announced. Meanwhile, Scott Gottlieb, the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, this week launched another attack on the industry for its efforts to slow the entry of biosimilars into the market. Together, these factors set a very different tone in pharmaceutical pricing, but it is not yet known how far it will extend in policy and legislation. (This web article)