The Amgen headquarters in Thousand Oaks, California.Eric Thayer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC's Healthy Returns newsletter, which brings the latest health-care news straight to your inbox. Subscribe here to receive future editions.
Drugmakers are increasingly using telehealth platforms to sell their medicines directly to patients - and it's exactly what President Donald Trump wants.
Amgen is the latest company to wade into the direct-to-consumer space, announcing on Monday that it will offer its cholesterol-lowering drug Repatha at a cash price 60% below its current list price before insurance and rebates. It follows similar moves by other drugmakers to simplify how Americans get their medicines and political pressure from the Trump administration to lower U.S. drug prices.
Trump in July sent letters to 17 drugmakers urging them to take specific steps to curb costs for patients, including launching direct-to-consumer sales models for their medicines. Companies had to respond by Sept. 29. It was part of his effort to revive a controversial plan called the "most favored nation" policy, which aims to tie the prices of some drugs in the U.S. to the significantly lower ones abroad.
As part of that plan, Trump said his administration will launch a website called TrumpRx.gov, which will have branded drugs available for direct purchase at a discount online. For example, under a new agreement with Trump, Pfizer said it will offer a large share of its primary care treatments and certain specialty branded drugs on that site at discounts of 50% on average and up to 85%.
The pharmaceutical industry's direct-to-consumer programs typically offer a heavily discounted cash price, along with free shipping, to people who buy directly from the companies with cash, rather than filling their prescriptions at brick-and-mortar pharmacies and paying with their health insurance cards. By embracing a direct-to-consumer sales model, drugmakers can bypass middlemen such as pharmacy benefit managers and potentially capture some of the billions of dollars in revenue that flow through those intermediaries each year.
Here's your guide to the industry's current direct-to-consumer models.
We expect the pharmaceutical industry to strike more drug-pricing deals with Trump, which could include new direct-to-consumer models for medicines, so stay tuned for our coverage.
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