Pfizer CEO responds to Trump's threats against pharma: 'We need to raise prices'

When asked how the drug industry should react to President-elect Donald Trump's vow to "bring down drug prices," Pfizer CEO Ian Read had an unlikely response: Raise drug prices.

"We need to pay more for medicine so we can develop more good medicine, so we can drive, through competition, lower costs," Mr. Read said Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to CNBC.

What Mr. Trump and others don't understand is that good drugs cost a lot of money to make, said Mr. Read.

"The pill is not the point," said Mr. Read said. It's simply a "delivery mechanism for knowledge" to cure a disease or illness. The pill is just the end point of a long research and development process, which costs a lot of money, according to Mr. Read.

Despite this opposition, Mr. Read is still optimistic about the incoming administration and gave Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt, saying he has not yet been briefed much about competition in the drug industry.

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