Pharma execs tell investors Medicare negotiations won’t have a big impact

 
What they’re saying: AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot told reporters last month that the initial offer from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) was “relatively encouraging,” while Pfizer CFO David Denton told investors that the impact from negotiations would be “modest.”
 
Far from cooling to the idea of negotiating the prices of their drugs, advocates see these comments as reassuring lip service to potentially anxious shareholders.
 
Merith Basey, executive director of the advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs, said, “We were expecting that they would come…