More politicking on the Trump administration’s rebate rule

Remember last week’s mysterious case of Facebook ads driving comments on the Trump administration's rebate rule? Turns out those aren’t the only ads being run on the proposal.

The American Conservative Union, the group perhaps best known for organizing CPAC, the annual confab of conservatives in Washington, is now running ads praising the proposal.

“[Trump] keeps delivering. Now he's fixing the broken system driving higher prices on prescription drugs,” the ads state. ACU did not respond to multiple requests for comments on where the ads would run.

And that's not all: An ACU-branded website, Trumprebateplan.org, encourages visitors to call the White House and thank President Trump for the plan. The website also includes a form letter that visitors can fill out praising the plan.

While it's not unusual for groups like ACU to run ads praising the president, I'm struck by the group's recent efforts to influence the drug-pricing debate. It has also run ads lambasting Trump's idea of tying what Medicare pays for drugs to what other countries pay, calling the idea a “radical proposal ... directly out of the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton government health care takeover playbook.”

ACUs positions on drug pricing, namely its support for the rebate rule and animus toward the international pricing plan, appear to align quite closely with that of PhRMA, a group that gave ACU $150,000 in 2017, according to IRS records.

A PhRMA spokesperson declined to comment specifically on the group's relationship with ACU. "I’m not getting into specifics as to who we may or may not engage with, but we engage with groups and organizations that have a wide array of health care opinions and policy priorities," the spokesperson told STAT.

ACU did not responded to requests for comment.