9 July 2018 - Medicare and Medicaid administrators earlier this year quietly killed a plan to pay for a breakthrough, half-million-dollar cancer treatment based on how well it worked, scuttling one of the Trump’s administration’s first and most highly touted attempts to lower the cost of drugs.

The payment deal for Swiss drug giant Novartis' Kymriah therapy drew internal HHS scrutiny and is the target of current congressional investigations. Democrats want to know if the company got preferential treatment because Novartis paid President Donald Trump's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen $1.2 million in early 2017 for health care consulting work — though there’s no indication Cohen played any role in the Kymriah deal.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services touted how the “pay-for-performance” arrangement would save lives and cut Medicare and Medicaid spending right after the FDA approved the company’s $475,000 gene therapy to treat kids and young adults with leukaemia.

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