Novartis (NVS.US) CEO: Concerns about Trump's drug policy are overstated.

The Swiss pharma giant Novartis NVS US said the industry policy initiatives of the new Trump administration could be beneficial for drugmakers, and that the market's concerns about vaccines and broader pharmaceutical and public health funding were "overblown". Vas Narasimhan, the CEO of Novartis, said in a recent interview that the new health policy of the Trump administration could be helpful for drugmakers, and that the company was looking to reverse some of the actions of the previous administration.

Narasimhan said in an interview that Novartis wanted to work to reverse some of the policies of the previous US administration, which he said "had a chilling effect on innovation". He cited the Inflation Reduction Act, which allows the US government to negotiate prices for certain key drugs.

US pharma giant Eli Lilly LLY US said last week that drugmakers would ask the new Trump administration to pause drug price negotiations.

"If we can address some of the elements of US public policy, like the Inflation Reduction Act and some others, that actually could be a huge blessing for the industry," Narasimhan said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "We think this could be a very critical moment this year."

The Inflation Reduction Act allows the US government to dramatically lower the price it pays for a range of older but popular drugs under the Medicare federal health insurance plan. Even the latest round of federal negotiations saw the average price paid by the federal Medicare insurance program fall by 22 per cent.

Like other leaders in the pharmaceutical industry, Narasimhan did not choose to criticise Robert F Kennedy Jr, the Trump nominee for US health secretary, who is a prominent vaccine critic and a sceptic of the covid-19 vaccines, and who has accused drugmakers of corruption and "mass poisoning of the market".

One of the first industry initiatives of the Trump administration was to issue an executive order announcing the US would withdraw from the World Health Organization, thus cutting off one of the organization's largest sources of funding.

"There is a policy environment and there is a rhetoric, and I think we can actually create a positive industry policy environment," Narasimhan said. Drugmakers need to "educate the American people and the global people that our data is very reliable, our vaccine products are very safe."