What MFN pricing means for specialty drugs | Asembia AXS26 Summit
ADVI Health’s Lindsay Greenleaf discusses how most-favored-nation drug pricing is playing out among specialty drugs.
Drug companies are pausing international launches, rethinking pricing strategies and pushing for prices overseas to be aligned with those in the U.S., according to Lindsay Greenleaf, J.D., MBA.
Greenleaf, head of market access policy strategy at ADVI Health and a member of the Managed Healthcare Executive (MHE) editorial advisory board, spoke at a session on most-favored-nation drug pricing policy today at the Asembia specialty pharmacy summit in Las Vegas.
In an interview with MHE, Greenleaf clarified that the administration's direct-to-consumer cash-pay platform, TrumpRx is not a choice olution for all drug manufacturers. Companies with smaller portfolios concentrated in rare disease treatments or expensive, physician-administered therapies are generally not well-suited for the platform. However, she emphasized that Trump Rx remains a significant policy development, with 37 new drugs recently added. “It's going to keep coming, so something certainly worth doing for products that it's appropriate for, but not for everyone's portfolio. The administration knows that. These companies aren't being pressured to make something work for a product that's either for a rare disease or physician-administered.”
Greenleaf also discussed “prospective MFN” pricing — the administration’s push to have drugmakers price their products at MFN levels at the time of launch. “It's a very notable shift, and you're seeing companies, some of them are publicizing decisions they're already making, even though these models haven't been finalized yet,” she said.
Greenleaf noted that Bristol Myers Squibb announced it would not sell its schizophrenia drug Cobenfy (xanomeline and trospium chloride) in the United Kingdom unless the price there matched the U.S. price. More broadly, a number of ADVI's clients are reconsidering or delaying overseas launches entirely, she said. "Some of them are just pumping the brakes entirely, saying we're just not going to launch until all of this is clear and finalized," Greenleaf said.
