By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
Courtney, is it your understanding that President Trump, does he have the authority, Courtney, to do what he is proposing, what he wants to do here without congressional approval and legislation?
00:18 Courtney
Great question. So, I think what was interesting in this executive order, where there is kind of a there is a request part of the order, and then there is a kind of threat part of the order. And in the request part is the suggestion that the government administration will pull together proposed MFN prices, propose these to companies, and then the companies get to choose to take actions to start lowering their US prices to come into line with those MFN prices. That perhaps is is kind of within the bounds of uh of some of the actions that could be taken if the industry decides to play ball. The second part, though, the threat if the industry doesn’t play ball, is when legislation is required, kind of akin to what we saw with Biden and kind of the IRA, and the uh the MFP, the maximum fair price negotiations that are in place now for uh Medicare drugs. Um this is likely to require to be required to be instigated in legislation. Um and certainly through the press conference today, we saw reference to the fact that the intention is to load this legislation into the big beautiful bill that the Republicans are preparing on a number of topics and including tax cuts, um and ensure that that is a a a place for it to potentially pass. I think, however, there is a lot of of steps, a lot of detail, and the devil will really be in the in that detail as to whether this legislation can uh kind of proceed, doesn’t have court issues going for going forward, and uh and we do actually see any implementation of this. I think is is still a question mark.
04:26 Speaker A
So, Courtney, do you think that the drug companies will call the president’s bluff and not lower the prices as he’s requesting?
04:47 Courtney
I think this is something that we’re going to see playing out over the over the next few weeks to months. Uh they’ve given themselves uh the administration a 30-day deadline to to begin these conversations with pharma companies. Um bearing in mind, kind of the the the pharma lobbying body, Pharma, and uh many of the CEOs have been engaged with the administration kind of day in and day out over the past couple of months on this along with tariffs. So, kind of this will be a continuation of conversations that have probably already been happening in private. Um certainly what we did see in the executive order were a number of things that the drug companies have been wanting to achieve. They’ve been wanting to uh point the target to the countries outside the US and say, “Their drug prices are too low, uh and we need your help there.” And they’ve also been pointing to the PBMs as being responsible for a large part of the reason as to why US drug prices are too high. So, there certainly were some olive branches given to the industry, um and definitely a reflection even of the industry lobbying lex lobbying language in this bill, sorry, in this executive order. Um and so when it comes to kind of is there going to be goodwill and trust from the industry, there might be a path here, but we’ll just have to wait and see.