While Trump was expected to be a proponent to free-market health care, drug company executives and observers warned that the President-elect could scrutinize prices as a populist issue.
Allergan Plc Chief Executive Officer Brent Saunders told an investor conference that Trump could end up being more “vicious” on pricing than Clinton and cautioned that the industry has a “false sense of relief.”
“It’s not a new position for (Trump),” Jeffrey Loo, health-care equity analyst at CFRA Research, told CNBC. “The fact that he reiterated his position again made investors nervous about his position on price controls. … Outside of the comments he’s made about drug prices there’s so much uncertainty about the (Affordable Care Act) and what the Trump administration could do.”
A few drug CEOs have come out to state they are not aggressive price takers. For instance, Merck & Co. CEO Ken Frazier said that the company has refrained from raising costs of its medicines.
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