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The pharmaceutical industry wants you to know that it’s not “getting away with murder. ”That was the accusation leveled by President Trump two weeks ago, and it stunned industry executives, who were already on the defensive after sustained and increasingly harsh criticism of drug prices that has lowered their reputation among consumers and politicians. (Ed Silverman, 1/23)

President Donald Trump recently took a swat at one of his favorite pinatas, Big Pharma, vowing to revamp federal rules for buying prescription drugs. "They're getting away with murder," he said of drugmakers. "Pharma has a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power and there is very little bidding. We're the largest buyer of drugs in the world and yet we don't bid properly and we're going to save billions of dollars." (1/20)

Last week, Donald Trump complained about drug prices in a press conference. Drug companies, he said, are “getting away with murder.” During that presser, pharma and biotech stocks lost over $20 billion in value. Investors should have learned an important lesson. They probably didn’t. Trump’s targeting of drug sellers was not a fluke. Hillary Clinton's "price gouging" tweet last September had the same type of impact on markets. For those who understand the big picture, these two events offer clues about the future of the drug business. (Patrick Cox, 1/19)

Anyone in biopharma hoping for Johnson & Johnson's fourth-quarter earnings to dispel their Trump-related gloom was disappointed Tuesday morning. J&J's revenue missed expectations, and its 2017 profit guidance fell short. It's no time to panic; J&J's CFO chalked the guidance disappointment up to foreign-exchange issues. But the warning highlights how hard it is for a company of J&J's size to generate growth and why it is considering a big, complicated deal for Swiss biotech Actelion Ltd. (Max Nisen, 1/24)

The United States faces a major problem with prescription drug prices. Even as the prices of most goods and services have barely budged in recent years, the cost of drugs has surged. During the presidential campaign, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump cited the high cost of prescription drugs as an issue that needed to be addressed. Most recently, the president took direct aim at the pharmaceutical industry, saying it’s “getting away with murder” and arguing “new bidding procedures” are necessary to lower drug prices. (Marcelle Arak and Sheila Tschinkel, 1/21)

It didn't take long for the first specialty pharma scandal of 2017 to materialize. Mallinckrodt PLC on Wednesday disclosed it will pay $100 million to settle FTC charges that Questcor Pharmaceuticals, which Mallinckrodt bought in 2014, illegally raised the price of its best-selling drug Acthar by 85,000 percent and bought the rights to a cheaper competing drug to keep it out of the U.S. market. The settlement forced Mallinckrodt to give a free limited U.S. license for that cheaper drug to a competitor, Marathon Pharmaceuticals. (Max Nisen, 1/19)

Right now, private insurers bargain individually over drug prices for millions of senior citizens in Part D. That was a major concession to drugmakers in the current law, which took effect in 2006. Critics say the government could drive down prices with its potentially enormous leverage at the bargaining table. (1/25)

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. started 2016 as the acknowledged king of immune-boosting cancer drugs. That position has never looked shakier. Thursday evening, Bristol announced it won't seek accelerated FDA approval for a combination of its leading cancer drug Opdivo and another immune-oncology (IO) drug called Yervoy in treating newly diagnosed lung-cancer patients. (Max Nisen, 1/20)