If President Donald Trump has his way, television viewers who see commercials for the drug Keytruda will learn not only that it can help lung cancer patients, but also that it carries a price tag of $13,500 a month, or $162,000 a year. Viewers who see advertisements for Neulasta, a drug that reduces the risk of infections after chemotherapy, would learn that the list price for each injection is $6,200.  Magazine readers would see a new bit of information in ads for Humira the world's best-selling drug, prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases: its list price, which has been widely reported as approximately $50,000 a year.

          The disclosure of such data is perhaps the most eye-catching goal of Trump's plan to lower drug prices.  The president is determined to bring "price transparency" to the market in an effort to stimulate competition and overturn the current convoluted, opaque system in which everyone but the consumer benefits from higher prices, said Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services.

          The idea seemed like an idle threat at first.  The White House floated it as one of 50 options when Trump, in a Rose Garden speech may 11, vowed to "bring soaring drug prices back down to earth."  Three days later, however, Azar said the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services were examining not whether but "how to require ddrug companies to post their list prices in direct-to-consumer advertising." He said that "when patients hear about a wonderful drug, they should know whether it consts $100 or $50,000."

          Until a ban is in place - and none is in sight - the AMA says that advertisements for prescription drugs should be required to state the manufacturer's suggested retail price for those drugs.  Experts said that providing the list price, as recommended by the Trump administration, could be misleading because, in many cases, it is not what consumers pay.

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"What an individual pays for a given drug is driven by lots of hidden and some obvious factors.  So it could be a challenge to disclose prices in a uniform and consistent fashion."

Dr. Clifford A. Hudis, chief executive of the American Society of Clinical Oncology