STAT reporters look ahead on the home page to see what might unfold under the Trump administration. For STAT Plus subscribers, here’s what reporters covering biotech, pharma, and policy will be watching for:
Will Trump be a friend or foe to drug advertisers?
Direct-to-consumer drug advertising has been under siege in recent months. Critics have called for a three-year moratorium on advertising new drugs, an end to the tax breaks that drug makers can take to offset ad spending, and even an outright ban on the practice. There’s a sense among drug advertisers that they dodged the worst of a potential crackdown on their industry thanks to the Republican sweep in the November election — but Trump, as always, is a wildcard. At the big annual drug advertising conference last April, an industry lobbyist expressed reservations about whether Trump was truly an ally because, after all, “he is a dealmaker, and this is a dealmaker’s issue.” We’ll be watching closely to see how Trump approaches policymaking that affects drug advertisers — or if he just leaves them alone. If he takes them on, it will be yet another signal that Trump is rewriting what the industry thinks it can expect from a Republican.
