Numerous health policy changes were unveiled by the Trump administration during the first five months of 2025 – far too many to detail in this introductory monologue, otherwise we’d be here all day.

However, plenty of medical marketing industry stakeholders are focused on one policy proposal that hasn’t been announced yet: a ban on pharmaceutical advertising.

Potential restrictions on the longstanding practice of educating patients and raising awareness of medical conditions and diseases would undoubtedly impact the bottom lines of drugmakers and upend the marketing strategies of their agency partners.

Still, nothing has been announced yet and depending on who you listen to within the Trump 2.0 HHS, nothing may come to pass on that front.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary recently told former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly that the agency doesn’t “have any plans to ban direct-to-consumer advertising.”

Yet he teased that there are “some things that we can do to make sure that the information being presented is a complete picture.”

While many took Makary’s remarks to mean that the immediate battle on the proposed Rx ad ban is won on the federal level, nothing can be taken for granted with the Trump administration’s freewheeling approach to policymaking.

That means healthcare executives need to stay alert and have preparations in place for potential action coming out of HHS.

In this week’s episode, reporter Heerea Rikhraj speaks with CheckedUp CEO and 2024 MM+M Pinnacle Award honoree Dr. Richard Awdeh about the potential ban on pharma TV ads and its implications for healthcare communications.

And for our Trends segment, Lecia and I break down the Trump administration’s return to the ‘most favored nation’ policy and we wrap up with an interview featuring one of our Pinnacle Award honorees from last week’s ceremony.

Thanks so much for being here, Richard. Thank you very much for having me. You’ve held a lot of different roles in the healthcare industry. You’re currently the CEO of Checked Up, which is founded by physicians and focuses on patient engagement and education. You also were the chairman of the FDA dermatological and ophthalmic drug advisory committee, as well as the co-chair of the Point of Care Marketing Association.

Could you talk a little bit about some of your roles and your experience in the healthcare industry, especially when it comes to healthcare communications and access? Absolutely. I’ve been fortunate enough to have several roles within the healthcare industry. First and foremost as a surgeon and healthcare provider. My was a surgeon and academician for several years.

I’ve worked in and ran an NIH lab and also sort of the FDA prior to this life on the media side of the fence. And so it it definitely has given me a a biased view and a bias towards doing the right thing for the patient and doing the right thing for how do we enable a patient to make the right decision in their care.

And that has really been the founding mission of what it is that we do and why I’m why I care so much and so passionately about everything that we are doing on the media side. Great. Thanks for touching on that and for sharing. So today’s topic, we’re talking about the kind of contentious debate around a potential ban on TV pharma ads. And this has been circulating ever since the new Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

took office. And he’s been saying for a long time, that big pharma needs to stop promoting the kind of ads that they currently have and are running on TV. And there’s just been a shake up within the drug makers world in terms of whether this ban is going to happen or not. Just for some context in terms of some numbers, you know, drug makers spend more than any other industry when it comes to TV pharma ads.

They spend about $4.2 billion dollars last year on TV ads alone, which was a 4% increase from the year before as well. And And, you know, there’s also been some talks about whether this ad will uh this ad ban will actually happen just because there’s so much money poured into it.

There’s also just so much when it comes to just providing information to patients and that’s their primary point of access of information to drugs or new drugs that are on the market through these advertisements as well. What are your thoughts on whether a ban might happen or not being in the industry working in a lot of healthcare communications and marketing side of things.

Where do you see this all playing out? It’s definitely an interesting time for all of us and and for us just turning the TV on every day. There is a lot of change. the only certainty that I see is that there is change. We’re moving at a pace and velocity with a lot of change. Regarding RFK Jr. specifically, as you point out, he has discussed a TV ban.

And what he has said relates to direct to consumer advertising on television, specifically linear broadcasters that are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission.

So, what he has discussed publicly been on DTC advertising that was that is on television and the linear broadcasters which are regulated by the FCC presumably would be responsible for enforcing and regulating. There has not been any discussion to date on the broader broader advertising ban for pharmaceuticals across other medias.

of internet, social media, point of care advertising, email. And more importantly, there has not been a discussion on advertising to healthcare providers. And I did want to ask you know when it comes to some of the specifics of whether there is going to be a ban or not, especially for certain types of different marketing communications agencies and organizations. Let’s say there is a bit of a change.

There is there are going to be some restrictions and RFK Jr. does follow through on some of what he said around a ban on some of these TV ads, especially that go through the FCC as well. How would that impact the broader lens or the broader landscape of healthcare communications? What are some of those trickle down effects? Yeah, I think it’s very important.

I think if you think about our position and all of this, specifically in Point of Care, it’s unique in the we’re marketing to the HCPs in addition to the consumers. We’re doing that in a very targeted environment within the doctor’s offices. And we’re doing it across networks that are not regulated by the FCC.

Now they are regulated in terms of other standards that we’re all compliant with, depending on the type of network and the type of media. But there’s been no discussion all this that would limit the targeting of of HCPs. And Point of Care advertising like checked up is not really the target of what the span is.

And I think that I believe that the model that Point of Care brings in terms of educating the HCP, educating and engaging the patient and doing that during the most pivotal moments in the health care decision making, really puts Point of Care in a unique environment.

and makes it difficult to argue that the point of care advertising networks are not really focusing on the HCP and given that we advertise in the doctor’s offices and around educational content that the physicians use to engage with patients. And I think more importantly, if you think about what are a case trying to achieve, he cares about his make America healthy again.

He cares about about health. At least that is the stated purpose of all of this, that he’s trying to improve health care. And what is clear to me, and I think this started in COVID with vaccinations and moving forward is that we are leaving an era of evidence-based medicine. As a physician, I trained in evidence-based medicine. And that means that we make clinical decisions based on randomly controlled clinical trials that are published and peer-reviewed academic journals.

And we use those that data to inform how we dictate care. And that evidence-based medicine era really went from the 50s until I would call it until probably right around COVID. And we are now shifting into this post-evidence-based evidence-based medicine era.

And I I think that is evidenced by the fact that patients or consumers are taking medical advice from social media. So, patient may see something on TikTok, or may see something on Instagram, and then they’re interested in that therapy, where there is really no filter. There’s no evidence-based medicine filter to those influencers, those people that are talking about these different treatments.

And so, part of all of this is how do we balance what our case trying to do and the change that he’s proposing in terms of advertising with the fact that we are trying to make Americans or a population healthier.

And a lot of that comes back to we need to be able to educate the doctors and patients as the patients become more hands on and are really changing into consumers in their health care.

And and that really involves shifting some of this advertising off of linear TV if that happens and really into social, digital, connected TV potentially and point of care because the dollars then are reallocated, but they’re allocated in a way that it’s really driving patient decision making with their health care provider in order to find better treatment.

And if you think about from a brand or foreign studio company perspective, you know, there there are really three buckets that a lot of our advertisers kind of fall into and think about their product life cycles. One is disease education. So you’re a patient, you want to understand if you meet the signs and symptoms for a disease, you may experience a sign or symptom or two.

And so disease education is really there to inform people to help people understand. Do I potentially have this disease? Do I need to get a consultation in order to understand whether or not and validate whether or not I have a disease. Or I’m or I’m I okay not in this bucket of this particular pathologic disease. The second is I know I have a disease. I’ve been diagnosed. It’s been documented by my healthcare provider.

And I’m trying to understand understand the different therapeutic options. And really, that entails a conversation with your HCP in order to really assess the risks and benefits for you personally. And you know that sometimes is difficult to do in a linear TV ad.

We all know the ISIs, we see them in the tiny fonts, but really the risk benefit conversation is one that is best served with the doc in the office and with the HCPs working directly with the patient. And so that is really second bucket. And the third bucket really comes into I know I have a disease. I’m being treated.

And the third bucket is, are there other treatment options that either I’m better suited for or that can be adjuvant to the treatment the treatment that I’m currently on. And so those three buckets really are what we focus on with our advertising partners and marketing partners as we help them use our network in order to better inform the patients and doctors.

Yeah, thanks for breaking it down when it comes to, you know, the different forms of communication and the importance of that as well. There are a couple of follow-up questions that I have, but maybe we can talk about some of the barriers when it comes to this potential TV ad ban first before we move on. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I I think that outside of this is me taking my doctorate off, there are significant legal and cost issues with what he’s proposing.

For example, the State of Vermont had attempted to ban DTC advertising on TV in the 2010s. Supreme Court struck it down then on constitutional First Amendment grounds. So in one state’s attempt to do this, this has been struck down by the Supreme Court. Similarly, five years ago or so, a federal judge blocked a rule that required drug makers include pricing in their TV commercials.

And at that time, it was indicated that the federal government did not have the authority to to force pricing into into DTC advertising. So, I think there are significant legal and constitutional barriers that will have to be addressed uh in order to see the change that RFK is proposing. Mhm. Thanks for touching on that and sharing that a little bit more.

One One thing I did want to ask is that there have been a lot of cuts on the federal level when it comes to health care agencies and in the Department of Health and Human Services, one of the offices related to drug prescription promotion, the office of prescription drug promotion OPDP experienced a number of uh layoffs as well.

And so our editor um Jack O’Brien did a piece on this where he talked to a lot lot of different folks in the industry and their reactions and they were worried in terms of what this means when it comes to understanding regulations around advertising and drug promotion.

And this kind of layoff or the sweeping layoff at this office and the agency as well can create a lot more uncertainty for medical communications moving forward. And so I wanted to get your sense of how this could also impact or just add to, you know, everything that is going on when it comes to understanding medical communications marketing as well as drug promotion moving forward.

Great question, and it’s similar to what’s happening in other parts of the government by making significant cuts in the headcount at these organizations. It is almost like throwing up the puzzle pieces in the air and then seeing where they’re going to land. And it’s hard to predict where the puck is going to land at the end of this. But one thing that is certain is that there will be change.

And so as we think through will that change be short-term, will the change be longer term, I think that with certainty we can all say this administration is forcing change and there and and you see it across.

Now when we get specifically into advertising and drug promotion and we’ve spoken a lot of our HC partners, we spoke with marketers and the brands and so one thing people are trying to predict is where’s the puck going to land? What does that mean for me?

Because I am responsible for a brand’s budget, trying to deploy that budget in a fiduciary responsibility in order to maintain the highest return on advertising spend for my brands. And that is really how marketers looking at this.

And so as you look at that landscape, I think that and if you look at the $4.1 billion or so that you mentioned that goes specifically to TV, I think there will be and I think the HCs and advertisers in anticipate a budget shift.

If this ban happens and even prior to this ban as they try to block inventory in digital, in social, on HCP and patient-targeted tactics and channels, Connected TV could see a lift, depending on how this law is enacted. And point-of-care will benefit.

Point-of-care space, point-of-care advertising provide success by targeting script writers, who are the physicians, not just the patients. These campaigns are current clinical settings as a reminder. And so point of care will be an area that that we believe will be a beneficiary of a budget shift from linear outside.

And just to kind of put it perspective, the market opportunity, pharma spends about $30 billion annual and advertising approximately $4 billion or so goes into TV. Point-of-care industry as a whole is currently around $1 billion today. So even a 10% shift in TV ad spends could double the size of the point-of-care advertising opportunity.

And so small shifts in linear can have huge shifts in these other buckets in methodologies that marketers, brand teams, HD partners are going to deploy these dollars in order to educate patients, the end of the day, that’s what we’re trying to do. Educate patients and their doctors to help enable the patients to make healthier decisions. And I believe that the pharma companies will continue to spend those dollars. I really believe that because it’s important.

It’s part of what their goals are to help patients make the right decisions. And I think that, you know, it it will likely what we’re going to see is a shift in those budget dollars and how those where those dollars and how those dollars are deployed. I did want to delve into, you know, the topic of point-of-care marketing a little bit more as well.

As that is a way that, you know, drug makers as well as health organizations and companies can still reach patients and educate them in a deeper way around new products on the market or new disease states as well.

Um and I wanted to ask, you know, when it comes to point-of-care marketing, what are some of the strengths of it and maybe where are some of the gaps currently that, you know, drugmakers, healthcare communicators and marketers can focus in on in order to bridge that gap between patients and physicians. Absolutely.

I I think that in terms of the positives, what a unique place to be uh you are really allowing and enabling a brand the opportunity to be in what I always considered the sacro saint place and and healthcare, which is in the lobby of a doctor’s office and in an exam room, where it’s traditionally been two actors play. It’s been the doctor and the patient together in a private space.

And so now through these technologies, the brands are able to have some level of brand positioning in that exam room or in that waiting room. And and really the goal there is to kind of focus on the three buckets I shared earlier, to disease education.

So patient is going to see a dermatologist and they had certain signs and symptoms to refresh a patient’s memory as they’re there and ask the patient, you know, or these signs symptoms that you’ve been experiencing. If so you might have this disease. So it’s really a talk to your doctor. The second is being able to feature a brand or a either a therapeutic brand or a surgical procedure.

But really to be able to do that where there’s a call to action which is talk to your doctor. And you’re there talking to your doctor. So what better place for a brand to be than to be positioned in an environment where a patient has already raised their hands, they’ve already volunteered to go to see their healthcare provider and now they are in a position where they are able to discuss their disease state, they’re able to discuss their treatment options.

And finally, it is really the point of sale. It is the in the US, it’s still the doctor or the HCP that is writing a prescription in order to go on a drug.

And so that really is a critical point and all of this that we are using as a way to enhance the patient doctor experience and really come back to making healthy decisions and enabling the patient to do that with their doctor. Thanks for sharing that. Uh, I did want to ask, you know, you have extensive experience working in Point of Care as well.

And um, you know, just for all the healthcare communicators, medical marketers that are listening as well, what are some effective strategies that work when it comes to point of care marketing that agencies should adopt when they’re for stepping into this space. Well, I am biased here, but I think all point of care strategies work really well. I think that the waiting room TVs are an amazing tactic.

The digital exam room wallboards, again, amazing tactic that offer both of them offer a unique positioning for brands to be able to access an office for us to be able to use different creative recalls to actually target different audiences of patients or different targets of HCPs.

So I really believe in digital and I believe that digital in the office provides a really amazing opportunity for brands. That said, print works really well as well. And so I I believe in some of the print tactics, posters, the cover guides, I think that that those items additionally add value and they add value for certain patient populations, audiences, and demographics within the doctor’s offices.

So I think that I’ve seen Point of Care as a doctor. It is something that is was really important for me as a doc trying to navigate through my day and explain over and over again to a patient. And so I’ve seen it from the position of being in the seat and really needing and wanting high-quality educational materials to share with the patient.

And that at the end of the day is what Point of Care allows the HCPs to do.

It’s enabling them with high quality, easy to understand educational materials that we can use to communicate with our patient regardless of, you know, your background as a doctor, your level of skill and communication It’s something that level sets every doctor so that the doctors and HCPs all have a really good way to communicate with their patients. And Point of Care does that.

It really levels the playing field so that all doctors and HCPs can communicate well and and help a patient make a decision. And I just want to ask, you know, what are the current gaps still in Point of Care marketing? Do you think that can be filled and there’s an opportunity for them to be filled? Great question. I think there’s a lot of room for innovation.

There are several companies that have joined the Point-of-Care Marketing Association and you’re we’re seeing a lot of innovation out of these companies. Some are in the electronic medical record space, others are in the digital realm that that can reach to a patient pre-office visit, post-office visit, and even during the offices. I think it’s a field with a lot of room for innovation.

It’s a field that we have seen a lot of growth in and a lot of interest in from our partners. And a lot of that is that it is a field that is historically delivered. It’s delivered time and time again year over year for our partners. And because of that, we’ve seen reinvestment in the space and a desire from the brands and agencies to see this entire space succeed. And I’m very excited about it. I’ve been excited about it.

and I think that everyone who’s been a part of this industry shares that excitement about what the future holds for the space. Thanks for touching on that as well. One thing I did want to ask and follow up on, especially when it comes to, you know, this um physician education, physician and patient education within the office space as well.

Um, you were talking about digital solutions like having waiting room TV ads and and um these kinds of installations in these physical spaces, but more and more consumers and patients are turning to telehealth services or to virtual appointments with their physicians as well. And they’re using, you know, a direct-to-consumer platform forms potentially that some of these drug makers have come up with in order to get prescriptions for drugs as well.

And so the space is so new and it’s evolving.

There’s so many regulations around it, but um there’s definitely so much passion about trying to you know transform these platforms so that they’re easy to navigate and easy to use and something that you know drug makers as well as communicators and patients have also been talking about is just that patients want to have have access to this information virtually and be able to see their physicians virtually and it all be consolidated in one space.

And so when you talk about point of care marketing, how can medical marketers and communicators kind of translate or use that kind of avenue to reach patients, but if they’re doing their appointments via telehealth as well. Um and they’re already they’re already going through this like uh technology and they don’t want to necessarily, you know, make their life harder by clicking out to a different platform to get more education and all of that.

So, can you talk about some of the strategies for telehealth, virtual appointments as well for Point of Care? Sure. I I think you had you had a great point here and it’s one of evolution and innovation. And you know, whatever that point of care is and I kind of call it the points of care.

What that point of care is, you said at home, in your living room, and wanting to engage in a telehealth visit, because it’s convenient for you, or because you are too debilitated to go to the doctor’s office.

Whether that point of care becomes a caregiver coming directly to your home, I think that all those points of care are avenues of innovation for because each of them represents an opportunity for a brand and or market to improve patient’s health by delivering the right message at the right time to the right person.

And I’m certain that if what our case proposing happens and there’s a shift or a cotton-headed or TV that all these avenues in Point of Care, all these innovative avenues will grow uh because these dollars will now come in and funnel into an entire industry that is focused on how do we use brand budgets um and the brilliance uh marketers and HD partners to be able to affect the health of a patient in a positive way.

And and I think your point is great here that that happens at any of the points of care. It can happen in the pharmacy, it can happen in the doctor’s office, it can happen in telehealth and so should this RFK uh ban happen and you and I get together four years from now on this call and say, you know, let’s look back to see what happened.

I think what we’ll see is a lot of innovation in the point-of-care industry with the ability of brands and marketing teams, the marketers to get the appropriate messaging in front of the appropriate patients at the right time in of their care. Mhm.

Um and I did want to ask, you know, especially when it comes to telehealth or virtual appointments, have you seen any of those innovations happen yet in point of care marketing? and what are some of those examples? We saw a bit of it during the pandemic where there was a shift out of the doctor’s office into telehealth. And then we saw a shift back into the doctor’s office. And so I think there were hints of a lot of innovation at that point in time.

I think there are some companies that are still innovating there. You know, not to name names, but there are some that are members of POCMA that are really focused based on innovating and really enabling brands to connect with patients during tele visits. And so I think there’s a lot of room left there to grow.

I did want to kind of move our discussion to talk a little bit about federal agencies and also your work at the FDA since you were the chairman leading the dermatological and ophthalmic drug advisory committee.

And I’m I’m sure you’re aware that there has just been a lot of changes at the FDA as well when it comes to reduction of the staff, you know, a lot of cuts as well and a lot of concerns when it comes to drug regulation when it comes to vaccine regulation, and um how drug makers can get products onto the market as well.

And I wanted to understand, you know, um from the perspective of medical marketers or healthcare communicators, where do you see these things playing out for them? I can start by saying, yeah, share the concern.

I I worked at the FDA for years, and I also um have been an NIH-funded researcher running uh research lab practicing and so understand that I am trying to maintain a positive attitude through this which is there will be change it is being forced through and I think that we all have to think a little differently about what the environment moving forward will be.

I think the only certain is that it is going to be a very different environment than it was. Now, I have not connected the dot personally to say that it’s going to be worse or better. I am still reserving the right my my unright to assess daily the changes, how this is going to be operationalized because I have not seen a clear plan of that.

And that does create a lot of nervousness Great nervousness with me. Great nervousness amongst my colleagues who are researchers who are are relying on grant dollars to continue the research. It creates nervousness and uncertainty on my colleagues who are at the HC and at the FDA. And so it for sure creates nervousness and uncertainty with our brand partners and marketers.

And I think that one thing way to think through this is we have to keep our eye on, where’s the pot going and how do we positively impact and work in this new environment.

It’s almost like the corollary of, you know, if you think about certain times in in history, things have changed so dramatically that the environment is very different. And and I feel that with this administration, that is where we’re going. And so it’s going to be a new environment to play in.

Um, that leaves some room for leaders to lead us through this and for the ones of us that want to define and participate in defining what’s the new environment look like um and fight for the things that are important to fight for for us to have a voice and for that voice to be heard.

And then maybe my last question for you as we kind of wrap up this conversation is, you know, what is your advice for medical communicators, drug makers, healthcare organizations kind of moving forward as they try to navigate trying to connect with patients during this uncertain time. I think it’s a great question. We’ve seen it with the forward thinking marketers. They also yeah they have certain amount of dollars. They’re uncertain about what’s going to happen.

And so they said you know what we’re going to go and block inventory in these other channels. Point of care being one where there is an inventory shortage based on exclusivity rules around brands. And so once it’s sold, it’s sold. I mean and the smart brand teams are blocking inventory now. We’ve seen this across this year. It’s been one of our biggest years yet.

And I think the thinking is that if linear has a shift, people don’t want to be blocked out of high ROI to spend their dollars.

And if they’re not forward thinking about digital, social, HCP, and point of care, they are left potentially in a place where the highest value real estate, the highest value ROI, the highest return on ad spend, categories and tactics are gone. And then marketers are are left carrying the bag trying to redeploy dollars late in a year.

when there is scarcity of inventory. And so I think that just seeing the calls, the meetings, and seeing the dollars already lead, that is the way that forward-thinking marketers are thinking about this, which is almost like stock market. They’re pricing in some level of cut to linear TV due to the uncertainty. And if the uncertainty is not here and nothing happens, they they full well know that they can go back and shift dollars back into linear. There is inventory available linear.

What there’s not inventory available and are some of these tactics we discussed the call today that works so well. Thanks for touching on that. And thanks for sharing, you know, your insights especially when it comes to point of care care as well as the way that healthcare communicators can engage patients as well. And thanks for being on the podcast. Absolutely. It was a true pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Trending. And this is the part of the broadcast when we discuss trending healthcare headlines and the big news of the day is that we have the return of the most favorite nation policy. Let’s show why don’t you walk us through what that is exactly. I think a lot of people in our audience are familiar at least with the background on it and we’re kind of anticipating it, but now we have it. Sure.

So today this morning Trump signed an executive order that he is referring to as the most favored nation order and it claims to bring down prescription drug costs through what the president calls equalization or essentially making the US pay the same amount for a drug that other countries are paying for it.

And he claimed that the new order would bring down drug costs by anywhere from 60 to 90 At a press conference on Monday, Trump argued that Americans have been quote subsidizing other countries throughout the world. So instead of putting the blame directly on the pharma companies for high drug costs, Trump blamed other countries and specifically the EU who pay a lot less for drugs than we do for creating the situation that the Americans have to pay more.

Basically, his argument is that governments around the world determine the price of of drugs and pharma companies have to adhere to that lower price. Um and they have to charge Americans up to you know six to eight to 10 times higher for those drugs to put that money towards R&D which is the pharma companies um historic argument around why they need to price drugs the way they do.

So Trump basically is arguing that we need to make other countries pay higher amounts for their drugs so that we can pay less. So, his entire press conference today was around that. His quote was American patients were subsidizing socialist healthcare systems in Germany in all parts of the European Union. Those countries are going to have to pay more for healthcare and we’re going to have to pay less. That’s all it is.

He claimed that this would be good for drug companies because they will still bring home the same amount of money. His quote was, “I don’t believe they should be affected that much because it’s just a redistribution of wealth. It could be the same top line, but it’ll be distributed differently. Basically, what we’re doing is equalizing, we’re all going to pay the same. So, the order also tasked HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

with creating a new policy that would make sure that pharma companies sell their drugs directly to US consumers and bypass the middlemen known as PBMs. But, and there’s a big but here, it’s unclear whether this plan will actually take place or if it will be stopped in the courts for context during Trump’s last term. He did try to pass a drug pricing executive order that um was halted by a court order. So that never ended up happening.

And the immediate reaction from the pharma industry, what I was reading today is that they are not too freaked out about it yet because they’re not really even sure if the plan will come to fruition. Investors are skeptical that he’ll be able to implement it in large part because they expect legal challenges and political obstacles. Pharma, the lobbying group group also put out a statement basically saying that they support the general idea of what Trump is doing here.

They believe that the US patients should not foot the bill for other countries, but at the same time pharma of the lobbying group as well as some large pharma companies basically said that the answer to affordable drugs is not necessarily through this approach. It should be through cutting out the middlemen.

So there seems to be a little bit of a mixed bag reaction from the pharma industry, but overall, they’re not quite concerned that this will even happen. So, um that’s kind of the general overview and you know we’ll have to wait and see and see if it is implemented before we see what the impact might be. Yeah, definitely. I and I appreciate the the background context there.

I was actually looking back at some articles that I wrote when I was at Health Leaders Magazine five years ago at this point and there was that summer of 2020 where Trump was really teasing it out and you know he had obviously had Secretary Azar, who was a former Lilly executive as his HHS secretary and there was a lot of slow walking to that policy and to your point, it ultimately is an executive order at the end of the day. So we don’t really know what the pronounced impact is going to be.

I’m curious, Leslie, having watched the press conference, just what sort of vibe you get coming out of the White House? Because I it does kind of align with what we’ve been seeing too in terms of the tariff talk where it’s like this narrative that the American people are being told by the administration situation where it’s like, we’re paying more than other people, other countries have to pay their fair share. Like, where do you see that kind of aligning with these other kind of bigger trends out there?

Yeah, well, he spent the first like 10 to 20 minutes of the press conference talking about the the general tariffs as a whole and and talking about, you know, some of the tariff negotiations with China. So, he was kind of setting it up for that to be the framework around it anyway. He’s referring to this essentially as trade negotiations to force foreign countries to pay their quote unquote fair share for medicines.

The other takeaway, it seems that he was very pro business and pro pharma in the way that he was kind of like addressing this in the press conference. he was saying like, look we’re not trying to take away from your bottom line, we’re not trying to make you have to take in fewer uh profits, we’re going to make other countries pay more.

And basically he’s still putting like the burden of drug prices on patients, just like patients in other countries rather than on the pharmaceutical companies themselves. So it seemed to all kind of align with his tariff plans in general. Um he seemed to kind of tie it all into that. You know, it was the the other people who are present were HHS secretary, RFK Jr., Marty Macri was there, Dr. Oz, who had CMS was also there.

So they all are kind of be tasked with putting this together and trying to push it through. It was really interesting too seeing the fact that those other three leaders were there like obviously they they have to be being other health leaders in the administration. But this isn’t something that necessarily RFK Jr. ran on when he was running for president. Never been like his biggest policy objective. But that, you know, most favorite nation goes back to well into the first Trump term.

So it’s going to be interesting to see where it goes from here cuz like he’s clearly taking the lead, putting whatever sort of political capital on the line to make this happen. What’s your sense in terms of where things go from here? You kind of allude to it earlier, like there’s probably going to be a legal challenge, like drug makers are kind of shrugging it off because it’s not immediate and they’re probably going to go to the court over it. Yeah, I think um it’s expected that there’s going to be some legal challenges to it.

Um you know, at the same time, Trump has talked a lot about pushing drug pricing, you know, reform through. I imagine that Republicans and Congress would potentially be supportive of it. So it’s really hard to say at this point what’s going to happen. The next pressing thing, I think, for the farm industry to keep in mind is the announcement of pharma tariffs, which we’re expected to see in the next week or two.

So that’s going to be a whole other impact that that has implications down the line I think this drug pricing reform, it’s a little unclear still what it holds for the future. And that’s Lesha teasing out the fact that she will have an article this week to kind of previewing what those tariffs could be and we’ll obviously have more analysis once those come through. So Lesha, I appreciate you hopping on early in the morning to be able to watch the press conference and also break down what it means in the larger context of tariffs and US trade policy.

And to wrap up today’s trending segment, you’ll hear Hires interview with Leslie Kobi of our genetics from last next week’s Pinnacle Awards in New York. Our next honoree is Leslie Kobi, US HCP experience lead at our GenX. Leslie, yeah, thanks so much for being here. You just got your award at MM&M’s Pinnacle Awards 2025. How does it feel like to be a Pinnacle honoree? It’s amazing.

It’s so wonderful just to reflect on not just my career, but being here with so many people, seeing the incredible careers that people have had and the impact that we’ve all had on patience is incredible. So, it’s it’s really a wonderful moment. Yeah, and you’ve done it a lot during your career. It’s been so extensive and so deep as well. I did want to ask, you know, what is something that you’re most proud of that you’ve achieved throughout this entire time?

I think really the thing I’m most proud of are really the the teams and people that I’ve been surrounded by. Um, the teams that I’ve been able to build, the people that I’ve developed, and it’s all in service of um delivering for patients patience, but I think what’s been most rewarding is just surrounding myself with amazing people who just just do incredible things on behalf of, you know, advancing science and medicine. That’s great.

And it’s always good to hear when it’s about like the patients and it’s patient focus. I did want to ask, you know, healthcare is so broad and so extensive. What are you the most passionate about when it comes to the healthcare sector? I really am focused and and I think my passion is around innovation. Uh, I think that There is so much unmet need out there. Need for more therapies that will help patients that are waiting.

And so really to be in this space is a complete honor because we’re really focused on driving innovation. So And what do you kind of anticipate like the health the future of healthcare kind of looking like? Now that it’s 2025, you know, AI is such a huge topic, such a big integration and a lot of like the pharma solutions moving forward. Where do you see kind of like the future health going from here?

What I hope is that all of the technology and all the innovation that’s happening really serves to get therapies into patients’ hands faster. I think that it is a long process and people are waiting. Um, every minute counts, and I’m really hopeful that the innovation and technology and all of what’s being out there really is channeled towards delivering better medicines, more targeted and faster. Yeah, thanks for that.

I think we talked a little bit about like kind of the hope for the industry moving forward, but I did want to ask, you know, where do you think kind of the industry is kind of lagging behind? Where do you think like the industry needs to invest more into in order to be able to get patients the It’s a great question.

I think for me, I think that if we can focus really around kind of focusing on the things that matter most, I think we get really bugged down by just process and red tape and I think really just kind of prioritizing the things that will matter most is is what we need to do to advance things forward. So Great. Yeah. Thanks for touching on that.

And my final question for for you is, what are you most excited about personally moving forward in your career? Again, I think it is really around having an impact for the teams that I have the huge fortune of working with. I hope that we provide an experience that our people say I’ve never had an experience like this. I’m so patient focused and I’m able to do all of these things that I didn’t think were possible.

So, that’s what drives me and I’m really excited about continuing to do that in the future. Yeah, thank Thank you so much for being here, Leslie. Congratulations on your award tonight. Thank you. We hope you enjoyed a snippet of MMN’s Pinnacle Awards, which were a rousing success, and we appreciate everyone who attended last week. Just as it heads up to our listeners, we are now less than a month away from two major occasions for MMN. Our Women of Distinction event will be held on June 3rd in New York City.

Hope everyone can attend there, and if you haven’t registered for tickets, please do so on our website. And then the 2025 MMN Agency 100 100 lists will be released on June 10th. And I can speak for myself, Les and Hire, James and anybody else in the brand that we have been up to our ears in NC100 profiles. The light is at the end of the tunnel there, so appreciate all the work that we have been able to do, but also for all the agencies on our lists being able to share their insights, campaigns, and work from last year.

So, keep an eye out for both of those annual flagship honors in the coming weeks. I thank everyone for joining us on this week’s episode of the MMN podcast. podcast, please be sure to listen to next week’s episode. We’ll be joined by John Nelson, a medical marketing veteran and mental health advocate. Take care everyone.

The MMN podcast is produced by Bill Fitzpatrick, Gordon Faylor, Lesha Bushek, Eray Rickraj, and Jack O’Brien. Rate review and follow every episode wherever you listen to podcast. And be sure to check out our website mm-online.com for the top news stories on the pharmaceutical industry and medical marketing agencies.