The illusion of lower drug prices

• Flashback: Trump criticized Pfizer after it announced midyear price hikes on about 40 drugs, including several generics. He praised the company yesterday.
• Reality check: Pfizer is only deferring those price hikes, not canceling them. And it’s taking its products back to what they cost in June — a time when Trump was very much of the belief that the prices were too high.

California is getting some results from a new law that requires drugmakers to tell the government and insurance companies before it raises prices beyond a certain threshold.

• Gilead, Novartis, Novo Nordisk and Roche have each canceled or scaled back some of their planned price hikes, apparently in response to the new law, Bloomberg reports.
• California’s law is only a disclosure requirement, not a hard limit on price hikes. But it's among the most aggressive disclosure requirements — which helps explain why the industry is suing to have it overturned, even while complying with it in the meantime.

• Yes, but: "This is not going to change mainstream list price behavior at all," industry analyst Richard Evans told Bloomberg.

The bottom line: There’s a big difference between structural reforms and temporary rollbacks for one set of price increases.