How Biden’s IP waiver complicates BIO’s search for a grand bargain

The Biden administration’s embrace of IP waivers for COVID-19 vaccines sent a shockwave through the U.S. biopharmaceutical industry that is reverberating far beyond the offices of manufacturers of pandemic prophylactics. Drug companies see it as a signal that the White House is putting progressive politics ahead of public health, a view that complicates calculations about how and when the industry should engage with the administration and its allies in Congress on a variety of issues.

The IP waiver decision was announced as BIO staff and member companies are in the middle of an initiative that is intended to plot a path out of drug pricing stalemates that put medicines out of reach for many Americans, and as the industry is under threat of government-imposed price controls. ...