GOP eyes pharma tax hike, nix drug price deal for Trump bill

House Republicans are considering nixing a Medicaid drug pricing plan floated by President Donald Trump and fiercely opposed by the pharmaceutical industry as the party pushes to strike a massive tax and spending deal in the coming days. 

But drugmakers may not be totally off the hook. 

Lawmakers have separately discussed eliminating a tax deduction for pharmaceutical advertising, Representative Vern Buchanan, the chairman of the House tax committee’s health subcommittee, said Thursday. It’s unclear whether that provision will be in the final tax cut package.

“I know it’s been brought up, so I don’t know where it landed,” Buchanan said.

Representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina, a senior Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, signaled Thursday that the drug pricing plan may be scrapped. 

The idea, first floated last week by the White House as a way to help pay for the president’s tax cut plan, blindsided the pharmaceutical industry and has prompted a furious lobbying campaign. Drugmakers said it could cost them $1 trillion over the next decade. 

While lawmakers may be poised to reject Trump’s drug pricing plan, the president is unlikely to abandon the concept entirely. During his first term, he pursued regulatory avenues to accomplish similar goals, and could do so again. Bringing foreign drug pricing into U.S. government programs could hurt drugmakers’ revenues.

The potential elimination of the TV ad deduction, meanwhile, could get backing of some in the Trump administration. 

Pharmaceutical ads have come under special scrutiny as most other countries don’t allow drugmakers to run television ads, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called to ban the television ads entirely.

Currently, pharmaceutical companies can deduct advertising costs as expenses on their taxes, which is standard for other industries, too. 

Greg Murphy, another Republican member of the Ways & Means committee, introduced legislation to eliminate the pharma ad tax deduction last month. In announcing the legislation, Murphy said the television ads lead to “inappropriate prescribing practices.”