Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump took to the bul­ly pul­pit to­day to steer a pack­age of pro­pos­als in­to ex­is­tence that he claimed is “the most sweep­ing ac­tion in his­to­ry to low­er the price of pre­scrip­tion drugs for the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”

But if that was his aim, his shot hit so far from the mark that it trig­gered a spike in Big Phar­ma stock prices as an­a­lysts dis­missed the ef­fort as a “non-event” cen­tered on some mar­gin­al pro­mo­tion­al is­sues that would be a “small price to pay” for avoid­ing tak­ing a hit on their con­trol of drug pric­ing.

Trump’s short speech — play­ing out against a back­drop of rev­e­la­tions that No­var­tis had paid his per­son­al at­tor­ney $1.2 mil­lion — con­tin­ued his prac­tice of ex­co­ri­at­ing drug lob­by­ists and spe­cial in­ter­ests. But it was long on rhetoric and short on tough moves. 

The pres­i­dent said his pro­pos­als would re­sult in “elim­i­nat­ing the mid­dle men; the mid­dle men be­came very, very rich,” even though their stocks al­so surged in the wake of Trump’s roll­out. And he vowed to take on spe­cial in­ter­ests while pre­vent­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers from ex­ploit­ing the coun­try’s patent sys­tem to guard block­buster ther­a­peu­tic fran­chis­es.

As promised, Trump ac­cused oth­er coun­tries of en­gi­neer­ing ar­ti­fi­cial­ly low drug prices, forc­ing Amer­i­cans to shoul­der the weight of “the enor­mous cost of re­search and de­vel­op­ment.” Trump al­so weighed in against so-called gag laws that pre­vent phar­ma­cists from point­ing con­sumers to low­er priced al­ter­na­tives to pre­scribed drugs.

In a quick fol­low-up, HHS Sec­re­tary Alex Azar raised one spe­cif­ic pro­pos­al that aimed at sham­ing phar­ma com­pa­nies by forc­ing them to in­clude the price of the drugs they pro­mot­ed in ad­ver­tis­ing.

While lob­by­ists may have come in for a tongue lash­ing, the in­dus­try has to be pleased that the ad­min­is­tra­tion is mak­ing no move to re­quire Medicare to ne­go­ti­ate low­er prices, or al­low for reim­por­ta­tion of drugs from those oth­er coun­tries with cheap­er prices. What we heard about to­day amount­ed to some tai­lor­ing and planned slim­ming — the ba­sic out­fit re­mains the same. And that fact helped trig­ger a broad ral­ly in Big Phar­ma stocks af­ter the speech wrapped.

HHS pro­vid­ed more specifics in a blue­print for ac­tion that it dis­trib­uted just be­fore the speech­es. The ac­tions in­clude —

• Adding val­ue-based drug con­tract­ing, which the in­dus­try has al­ready ea­ger­ly signed off on as a need­ed com­pro­mise.
• Chang­ing the for­mu­la­ry struc­ture used by Medicare Part D plans to al­low for a min­i­mum of one drug per cat­e­go­ry or class, rather than 2, to height­en com­pe­ti­tion and al­low some lever­ag­ing.
• En­cour­ag­ing states to try new de­mo projects us­ing best prac­tices from pri­vate in­dus­try to low­er drug costs.
• End­ing the 180-day gener­ic drug ex­clu­siv­i­ty pro­vi­sion as a tem­po­rary mea­sure to hold back dis­count com­pe­ti­tion.
• Go­ing af­ter low for­eign drug prices be­gin­ning with an analy­sis of prices in coun­tries be­long­ing to the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment.
• In­clud­ing new rules aimed at low­er­ing out-of-pock­et ex­pens­es.
• Of­fer­ing thoughts on in­creas­ing the num­ber and ac­cess to biosim­i­lars, elim­i­nat­ing a process where “man­u­fac­tur­ers may seek to use shared sys­tem REMS to de­lay or block com­pe­ti­tion from gener­ic prod­ucts en­ter­ing the mar­ket.”
• Giv­ing Part D plans more flex­i­bil­i­ty on adding cheap­er gener­ics to their for­mu­la­ries.
• And in ad­di­tion to see­ing if the rules can be changed to re­quire phar­mas to pub­li­cize pric­ing, the gov­ern­ment has a plan to spot­light drugs which have not seen reg­u­lar price hikes as part of an at­tempt to shine a light on the cost of in­di­vid­ual ther­a­pies.

The pro­pos­als to­day are very much a work in progress, with the ad­min­is­tra­tion promis­ing to look at in­ter­change­abil­i­ty of biosim­i­lars with brand­ed drugs, an is­sue that has raised the hack­les of some drug man­u­fac­tur­ers whose fran­chise drugs face a com­pet­i­tive threat.

But while com­pa­nies are like­ly to ob­ject to var­i­ous de­tails in the plan, with con­sid­er­able lob­by­ing to come on the specifics, there are no big changes out­lined here that will do what Trump has been promis­ing to do for more than a year: slash drug prices.

In­vestors clear­ly didn’t see any pain in the pro­pos­als. The $NBI surged, along with shares of the big phar­mas like Eli Lil­ly (up 2%), Mer­ck (up 3%) and J&J (up 2%). So did the PBMs — $ES­RX — that took a hit from the pres­i­dent. The win­dow dress­ing to this speech may have in­di­cat­ed a time of mourn­ing, but the lights were on and the par­ty was un­der­way in­side.

Jef­feries called it “be­nign,” and a “non-event.”

And Jef­feries LLC health­care trad­ing desk weighs in: 'TRUMP SPEECH BE­NIGN. NON-EVENT. COM­MENTS OVER­LY VAGUE. SHORTS ARE COV­ER­ING. MAS­SIVE WASTE OF TIME. NOTH­ING ELSE TO RE­AL­LY ADD.'

— Pe­ter Lof­tus (@Lof­tus) May 11, 2018

Leerink didn’t see much earth shak­ing about it.

Over­all we con­cur with the ob­vi­ous Street sen­ti­ment that the pro­pos­als are much less dra­con­ian than feared, and with no re-im­por­ta­tion, no manda­to­ry trans­paren­cy of con­tracts, no guar­an­teed flow-through of re­bates, no patent term ab­bre­vi­a­tion or risks, then the lim­it­ed im­pact of greater price trans­paren­cy, which the in­dus­try will op­pose, seems a small price to pay if in­deed those pro­pos­als are im­ple­ment­ed.

Trump, mean­while, is stick­ing with his vow to bring drug prices in­to line the world over.

This is “just the be­gin­ning,” Trump con­clud­ed, promis­ing new leg­is­la­tion and more ac­tions that re­quired help from Con­gress.

“We’re go­ing to see those prices come down,” he said. “It will be a beau­ti­ful thing.”

Im­ages: Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and Health and Hu­man Ser­vices Sec­re­tary Alex Azar. WHITE HOUSE via YOUTUBE

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.

A California judge will allow a plaintiff in a state court case to introduce expert testimony connecting a potential carcinogen in former blockbuster medicine Zantac to cancer.

The order was handed down on Thursday from state judge Evelio Grillo, who is now allowing both parties to introduce expert testimony in an upcoming trial after what’s known as a Sargon hearing, where a judge determines the admissibility of expert witnesses and expert opinions.