| | The Lead Brief | President Donald Trump’s push to create a website called TrumpRx that allows consumers to buy medicines directly from drugmakers has raised questions about who truly stands to gain. Among the potential beneficiaries: BlinkRx, the online pharmacy that installed Donald Trump Jr. on its board earlier this year. → The company helps manufacturers build patient-sales platforms, which is exactly the infrastructure the administration now seems to want. The TrumpRx website — a key part of the administration’s drug pricing push — is expected to roll out early next year. BlinkRx has invited pharmaceutical executives to an “invitation-only summit” in December about the “future of medicine” that it says will feature top Trump administration officials, according to an invite viewed by your host. The event includes a reception at the Executive Branch, a private club in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington founded by Trump Jr. and some of his business partners. (Memberships to the club can cost up to $500,000, The Post’s Maura Judkis chronicled this summer.) The Wall Street Journal first reported about the event, which is being co-hosted with 1789 Capital, the venture capital firm co-founded by Omeed Malik and Republican donor Rebekah Mercer and where Trump Jr. is a partner. Trump Jr. could not be immediately reached for comment, but told the WSJ that its article about the connection between his work with BlinkRx and his father’s policy endeavors is an “innuendo smear.” WSJ noted that Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Amgen were among those invited. Pfizer recently cut a deal with the Trump administration on its drug pricing efforts — and Trump said that Eli Lilly is likely to follow suit. → BlinkRx is also represented on K Street by Miller Strategies, a firm run by top GOP fundraiser Jeff Miller, who served as the finance chair to Trump’s second inauguration. The company hired Miller Strategies last December, shortly after Trump’s election. Lobbying disclosure forms show Blink Health — BlinkRx’s corporate name — paid the firm $180,000 during the first half of this year, and that Miller and other lobbyists on the account only contacted the House of Representatives on the company’s behalf. Miller didn’t respond to questions about whether he had been in discussions with the administration following Trump’s ramped-up drug pricing push that began in late July. (Reports covering the third quarter aren’t yet available.) The invite to the Future of Pharmaceuticals CEO summit highlights attendance by officials including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary and Mehmet Oz, who leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. → “HHS principals receive invites to many different events. We have not confirmed attendance to this specific event at this time,” an official at HHS emailed in response to an inquiry about the inclusion of Kennedy, Makary and Oz. The reception at the Executive Branch club will include “additional members of the administration,” the invite reads. → “I am not tracking anyone from WH planning on attending at this time,” a White House official tells me in an email. The White House didn’t respond to any additional questions, including about whether Miller had been in discussions with the administration about drug pricing on behalf of BlinkRx. “As long as drugmakers deliver cost savings for American patients through TrumpRx, how they do so is irrelevant,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told the WSJ. BlinkRx told the WSJ that “no company will be pitching any services” at the December event. Drew Hudson, a vice president of corporate affairs at BlinkRx, didn’t comment on the company’s advocacy in an email, pointing to the comments he’d made to the Journal. Hudson said he’s “excited to help bring together leaders from biopharma, technology, and government to discuss how to improve patient access, American competitiveness, and life-sciences innovation.” |