During 2019 and 2020, states enacted fewer laws requiring drug manufacturers to disclose pricing and related information. Initially, the slowdown may have been due to federal actions to rein in drug prices through the Trump administration’s multiple executive orders. Thereafter, states were focused on responding to the pandemic and drug pricing was understandably placed on the back burner.
Circumstances have since changed. We now have a new president and administration, and the country is hopefully turning the corner on the COVID-19 pandemic. Inevitably, the federal government and states will again turn their focus to drug prices. While the Trump administration’s executive orders made for good public sound bites, they had little to no actual impact on drug prices. At the end of the day, most of the Trump administration’s initiatives never made it to the regulatory rulemaking phase and those that did were met with legal challenges.
Only a month in, the Biden administration has issued multiple executive orders and memoranda reversing prior executive orders and freezing pending regulations and enforcement policies with respect to existing regulations. After a brief discussion of what we have seen in the early days of the Biden administration in terms of drug pricing, this article reviews new and existing state laws requiring drug manufacturers to report pricing and other information. Thereafter, we again question the efficacy of the state price transparency efforts and what manufacturers should be doing in terms of compliance.
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