This BBC podcast is supported by the UK.
This is Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman.
We invited some familiar friends to hang out with us at the Boston Nuthouse.
Thanks to Duncan.
Here is a sneak peek at some of the fun.
Vince Wilford.
Bill finally like, look guys, stop screwing around.
We are joined by Matthew Light, ladies and gentlemen.
And Vrabes.
You're going to love him.
Will Campbell.
Not into eating hot dogs.
Having Ernie Adams come and teach you defense.
Being able to play the wide three technique tackle.
Full episodes of Dudes on Dudes and Games with Names presented by Duncan.
Tune into iHeart Podcast or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Thanks to Duncan for a great time.
In business, they say you can have better, cheaper, or faster, but you only get to pick two.
What if you could have all three at the same time?
That's exactly what Cohere, Thomson Reuters and Specialized Bikes have, since they upgraded to the next generation of the cloud Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
OCI is the blazing fast platform for your infrastructure, database application development and AI needs, where you can run any workload in a high availability, consistently high performance environment and spend less than you would with other clouds.
How is it faster?
OCI's block storage gives you more operations per second.
Cheaper?
OCI costs up to 50% less for computing, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking.
Better?
In test after test, OCI customers report lower latency and higher bandwidth versus other clouds.
This is the cloud built for AI and all your biggest workloads.
Right now, with zero commitment, try OCI for free.
Head to Oracle.com slash strategic.
That's Oracle.com slash strategic.
Big pharma in the firing line.
We pay much higher for drugs than the rest of the world.
We subsidize the rest of the world.
We're not doing that anymore.
In some cases the list prices for drugs that drug companies set are many times those in other countries, like 10 times.
It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Gideon Long.
The deadline is up on Donald Trump's demand for drug makers to slash the cost of prescription medicines in the US.
We'll hear what that might mean for the industry and patients.
Plus video games maker, Electronic Arts, the company behind EAFC and Need for Speed, is being taken private.
And the French government tackles ageism in the workplace.
Welcome to the programme and thanks for your company.
We're starting tonight by talking about the cost of medicine in the United States because on Monday a deadline set by President Donald Trump for the big pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily lower their prices.
Well, that deadline has passed.
This has been a point of contention for the President ever since he came to office.
He wants prices for drugs lowered in the US and he wants them raised elsewhere in the world to, as he puts it, level the playing field.
Here he is speaking on the issue in July.
So for the first time in many years, we'll slash the cost of prescription drugs and we will bring fairness to America.
Drug prices will come down, even though the United States is home to only 4 of the world's population.
Pharmaceutical companies make more than two-thirds of their profits in America.
I spoke to Andrew Mulcahy, Senior Health Economist at U.S. not-profit think tank Rand Corporation.
The truth is, as it often is, it's complicated.
There are many different prices for drugs in the US and that price that applies depends on who's buying, who's selling what point in the supply chain.
You know we've done studies at Rand finding that in some cases the list prices for drugs that drug companies set unilaterally in the US are many times those in other countries, like 10 times prices in the UK and other countries in Western Europe for insulins.
For other drugs, though, the prices are much closer.
I think the big ticket drugs in the US that are all brand name right now, like the anticoagulants Eliquis and Xarelto, even if you start off with a price that's say, five times higher in the US and other countries at a company's list price, after all of the negotiating and deals behind the scenes, those prices might get a lot closer.
But still US prices are about two to three times those in other countries, even after all of those.
And why are they so expensive?
Part of the reason is that there are so many stakeholders involved in US prescription drug markets.
You have drug companies.
You have the insurers offering drug coverage.
You have their pharmacy benefit managers, their distributors, different kinds of pharmacies.
Everyone's taking a cut along the way, and that can lead to much higher prices.
The other big difference is that, unlike many other developed countries, the US doesn't have a single entity that's looking at the value from drugs.
So what we get as patients from drugs and how that aligns with the price.
That can lead to some much higher prices for some drugs in the US than other countries.
So this has been an issue for Donald Trump for some time, and he's asked the drug companies to make voluntary, binding commitments to lower their prices.
The deadline for them to do so has passed today.
Have they done anything?
It's hard to tell.
That kind of decision making up to the drug companies can lead to unbreakable results.
If there are ways that companies could get to lower prices for consumers to have better access to their drugs, they may well have an interest to do that.
On the flip side, they're trying to make the biggest return they can from their investments in new drugs.
And where that balance settles down for individual drug companies and products is hard to predict.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America has put out a statement today.
This is a trade association which represents some of the big drugs companies.
They put out a statement today and they say that they are doing things.
They say they're doing three things specifically.
I'll read them through.
One, they're delivering $500 billion in new US-based infrastructure investments.
Two, providing 10 million Americans every year with financial assistance to make up for what it describes as a broken health insurance system.
And three, setting up a new website that will connect patients directly to manufacturers.
So they are saying that they are taking this seriously and they are trying to help patients.
I think in some cases that kind of support could help patients.
I think that gets back to the fact though, that there are so many different stakeholders in US drug markets, and manufacturers are just one part of that ecosystem.
There are also pharmacy benefit managers, cures, and all of these middlemen along the way.
And so drug companies are actually in some ways limited to what they can do in terms of controlling prices.
They can set a price as drugs leave their factories.
But after that, it becomes a very complicated system.
And their ability to support patients through some of the later stages might help some patients, but isn't necessarily a silver bullet to lowering drug prices.
And the other argument that drugs companies always make is that they have to charge these prices as a return on investment, because drugs cost an awful lot of money to develop in research and development.
That's a good point.
And it's a point that industry does often raise.
The estimates for how much and how long and how risky it is to develop a new drug.
They tend to all get to very, very big numbers, though.
I think on the flip side for big blockbuster drugs, the return on that investment can be much, much larger.
And so it is about a tradeoff here, finding the right balance between revenue to drug companies and returns on those investments that they make in RD on one hand, and on the other hand you have access to drugs and the ability of patients and their drug coverage to actually afford them and get them into patients' hands.
Andrew Mulcahy from the Rand Corporation there.
Well, what do these high US drug prices mean for patients?
I'm joined by two people who can shed some light on that.
Kenneth Mendes is the Chief Executive Officer of the Asthma and Allergies Foundation America.
He's also an asthma sufferer.
And Sarah Winsowski, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis eight years ago.
Welcome to the programme, both of you.
Thanks very much for joining us here on World Business Report.
And Sarah, if I can start with you, first of all, my sympathies with you living with what is an awful disease multiple sclerosis.
Can you just give us an idea of what that's been like for you in terms of the financial hit in the eight years since you were diagnosed?
Hi, thank you for having me.
So I would start off by saying that multiple sclerosis is progressive disease in nature, but it no longer needs to be.
We have the drugs to mostly combat that.
The problem is that they cost, they're cost prohibitive for a lot of patients.
For example, I have fantastic insurance.
I have employer contributed insurance.
I was looking at last year not one but three denials from my insurance, because the drug cost on my KeySympta, which is the disease modifying drug, alone was 9000.
So, I was denied for an entire year.
Right up until the deadline I had taken it to my state attorney general and we were going to take it to what they call a fair hearing to actually try to take on the insurance company to get them to pay for it.
And they finally caved and Thank goodness it was covered for me.
So that one drug is just one injection a month for $9,000.
On top of that I also have 500 in additional prescription drug costs with my insurance that help to treat the other symptoms.
So like I said, it is a bad disease.
It doesn't have to be nearly as bad as it once was.
And presumably you welcome the president making this an issue and trying to get the drug prices reduced in the United States.
I welcome anyone who wants to attempt to take this battle on.
Absolutely.
Am I totally sure that this will have the outcomes that we hope it has?
I think it's too soon to tell.
My biggest concern is that, instead of lowering our costs, it would raise the costs for everyone else.
But if, If it does work out for the best, then it would be a huge win, I think, for the president and for all of the American people.
And Kenneth, can you give me an idea of what costs you're entailing, as an asthma sufferer and other people who are part of your foundation as well?
Sure.
I mean, the number one thing we hear about is very similar to what we just heard here is access and cost of medication.
But, you know, it's a complex system for what we were hearing earlier.
And you need to fix all parts of the system.
You know, once it leaves the drug manufacturer's hand, then it goes into this area of health insurance, as we just heard, pharmacy benefit managers and they create these formularies that carry the drugs.
And sometimes they're very restrictive for patients to get medication.
So the out-of-pocket cost, if it's not on the formulary offered by the insurance company, can be astronomical.
Now, what's part of that pricing structure is a rebate.
And there's this structure in the system where drug companies, in order to be placed on the formulary, will negotiate with a PBM that's owned by an insurance company.
And in order for that PBM to get paid or for the drug company to be placed on that formulary, that PBM gets a rebate.
So there can be an incentive actually to have high out-of-pocket costs for patients if your insurance company doesn't cover it.
And Kenneth, since after the president made this an issue by signing that executive order back in July, have you seen any evidence that the big drug companies are taking measures to try and reduce prices for patients?
Yeah, I mean, I think they always have.
We see it all the time because we have patient assistance programs, drug companies let us know.
It's a service that we offer to our community as nonprofits, to make sure that they understand they meaning our community on how to get whatever rebates or assistance there are from the drug companies to obtain the medication.
But for example, Some patients in the United States who are on the federal insurance programs like Medicare, TRICARE if you're in the military, or Medicaid, you can't use some of those patient assistance programs with federal health insurance.
And Sarah, if you could appeal directly to the President of the United States and to the big drug companies in the US, what would you say to them?
What would you like to see them do?
So I think that...
I would like to see them take this on as a bigger economic picture.
So the way I like to appeal to healthy people who maybe don't face these challenges is that I make very good money, but every ounce, every last dime of my disposable income goes to paying my out-of-pocket healthcare costs, most of which are prescription drug costs.
So that's money that I'm not spending in your small business.
It's money that I'm not spending in your Uber.
I'm not traveling to your Airbnb.
That's money that's just simply being sucked out of the economy.
So, even if you are a healthy person, who you think that this is not an issue for you at this point in time, I would like people to look at that bigger picture and think about how much more money would be infused into this economy if the people who were like me, who were sick but capable of still contributing, were allowed to contribute fully.
Lovely to speak to you both here on World Business Report.
Sarah, Kenneth, thank you so much for your time.
Peter Jankowski is Vice President of Research and Analysis at Arbor Financial Services in Chicago.
Peter, thanks for joining us.
Donald Trump threatening to curb the prices that drugs companies charge.
You would expect that to hit the profits of those companies.
So has this issue, has it hit share prices of the big drugs companies in recent weeks and months?
Not really.
I think we did see some weakness in drug stocks very early in the year, but this latest round of pronouncements hasn't really had much of an impact that I can see on the drug companies.
A couple of other pharma-related pieces of news today.
AstraZeneca says it plans to list its shares directly on the New York Stock Exchange.
It will still be listed in London, too.
It'll be a dual listing, but it is a tilt towards the US, or it looks that way.
Well, it's really just changing the way that U.S. investors can participate in the company.
They currently have American depository receipts and they're replacing that with a direct listing, which is a cleaner way to enable investment.
And I believe they're hopeful that they're going to gather more investment by taking that approach.
But there have been many other companies not just pharmaceutical companies that have left London altogether and moved to New York.
It has been a feature in recent years.
Indeed, and I think they went out of their way, their management went out of their way to explain that that wasn't the case here, that they were definitely staying committed to being in the UK market.
And another pharmaceutical story, shares of marijuana companies have climbed.
And this is again related to Donald Trump.
It was after he posted on social media championing the benefits of cannabis-related medicines for older people.
He said last month that his administration was looking to reclassify marijuana.
What's going on here?
He seems to be a fan of cannabis-based medicines.
Well, I think he certainly is, again, responding to part of the base that helped him get elected.
You know, he certainly was much more popular among younger voters this time around.
And that's been shown to be an issue that's very popular with that demographic.
And moving away from pharma, one story we noticed on CNN today Americans have more money in stocks than ever before.
And they're saying it's an all-time record of 45 of household financial assets on the stock exchange.
Yeah, so there's a couple of things there.
Certainly, stock ownership has become more widespread, but we've also seen a tremendous move up in the amount of equity exposure within portfolios.
You know, it used to be everybody talked about 60-40.
Now we see people well into their retirement period. that are 80% or 90% invested in stocks.
And it just goes to show that the market has had a very good run.
It's been well supported by fairly loose monetary policy.
And people have reacted in a way that they're going to go where they're going to get their best returns.
And you think that trend is likely to continue?
Well, I think there could certainly be disruptions to it.
We saw people pulling back after the financial crisis of 2008.
Not that I think that we're headed toward the same sort of an event, but if we do have a 20 or 30 percent downdraft, we could see some pullback from those sorts of positions.
Peter, thanks for joining us.
This is Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman.
We invited some familiar friends to hang out with us at the Boston Nuthouse.
Thanks to Duncan.
Here is a sneak peek at some of the fun.
Vince Wilford.
Bill finally like, look guys, stop screwing around.
We are joined by Matthew Light, ladies and gentlemen.
And Braves.
You're going to love him.
Will Campbell.
Not into eating hot dogs.
Having Ernie Adams come and teach you defense.
Being able to play the wide three technique tackle, full episodes of Dudes on Dudes and Games with Names presented by Duncan.
Tune in to iHeart Podcast or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Thanks to Duncan for a great time.
In business, they say you can have better, cheaper, or faster, but you only get to pick two.
What if you could have all three at the same time?
That's exactly what Cohere, Thomson Reuters and Specialized Bikes have, since they upgraded to the next generation of the cloud Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
OCI is the blazing fast platform for your infrastructure, database application development and AI needs, where you can run any workload in a high availability, consistently high performance environment and spend less than you would with other clouds.
How is it faster?
OCI's block storage gives you more operations per second.
Cheaper?
OCI costs up to 50% less for computing, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking.
Better?
In test after test, OCI customers report lower latency and higher bandwidth versus other clouds.
This is the cloud built for AI and all your biggest workloads.
Right now with zero commitment, try OCI for free.
Head to oracle.com slash strategic.
That's oracle.com slash strategic.
You're with World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
Now Electronic Arts, one of the biggest gaming companies in the world, has agreed a deal that will see it removed from the stock exchange and taken private a deal worth 55 billion.
The consortium of buyers includes Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund PIF, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, which is led by Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Piers Harding-Rolls is Research Director of Games at Ampere Analysis.
Well, it is a big deal because of the scale of it.
It's a $55 billion deal.
It involves Electronic Arts, who are one of the top 10 gains publishers globally, and it's a deal to take them private.
Just remind us, remind our listeners what games Electronic Arts is famous for.
So its biggest games are the kind of sports properties.
So it used to operate FIFA, which is now EA Sports FC.
It's the biggest sports game globally.
And then it has a collection of other licenses and sports games that it offers.
It also makes games in the shooter space.
So Apex Legends is a good example.
And it also has a very big franchise in the simulation space, which is called The Sims.
So yeah, it has a big collection of very well-known properties which have done very well around the world.
And what's the reaction been from the gaming community since this news was announced?
I guess there's a bit of trepidation about what it means for EA.
I listen to the kind of industry chatter and trying to understand what's going on in the industry in terms of whether there are going to be job losses as a result of this, what the impact is in terms of the kind of production cycle for different games that potentially are coming out in the future.
And obviously when you have a sort of leveraged buyout with a lot of debt involved, then there is this view or this idea that potentially in the future you will be trying to pay that off.
So how do you do that by reducing costs?
So obviously there's probably a lot of trepidation around job losses and stuff as a result of this deal.
And coming back to the value of this, $55 billion, that values the shares at $210 each.
That's a 25% premium on the market value.
Were you surprised at that price tag?
It is quite punchy based on the sort of multiples.
But in terms of the valuation, I think that when you've got entities like the PIF from Saudi Arabia involved, it's more about acquiring an entity and a business which allows them to kind of position themselves more readily into the global market.
So it's about the soft power that that enables.
And it's not just about the sort of fundamentals of the business and the potential returns.
You know, obviously they think there's potential for good returns in terms of synergies between the entities that they already operate.
And There's a few games companies, there's a few entertainment companies, there's sports properties and they all sort of align with EA's business.
So in that respect, they think there's an opportunity there.
They also feel that there's potential to drive down ongoing costs for the development of content through the introduction of AI and other tools and technologies.
And they see that as basically driving margin in the future appears harding roles at Ampere Analysis.
To France now, where the government has launched a campaign against what the Minister of Work calls the last discrimination ageism.
France has a particularly poor employment rate for the over-50s, and that's bad for the country's finances and a waste of talent for companies.
The government's trying to counter age prejudice, which its own research shows is rife.
John Lawrenson reports from Paris.
Recruiting someone over 50, not likely, says an employer in this public service announcement.
Her friend replies that he hired an over 50 called Sophie, who turned out to be his most reliable employee and the one who masters AI the best.
In a co-working space in Paris' officier Mérominil neighbourhood, Géraldine Cocon 55, prints out her CV.
She once had a brilliant career in communication, but things are not going as well as they did for Sophie really not.
Her age, she says, is the problem.
They think that I'm not going to be flexible, even though I make it clear that there's no salary problem, that I agree to have a position under what I had before.
Or there is a hierarchy with a communication director that is younger than I am.
Most of them are not confident with working with somebody older than they are.
It's illegal to discriminate against job applicants because of their age in France, but a government testing study found job candidates aged 48 to 55 were three times less likely to be called back than those aged 23 to 30.
It's standard practice here for companies to use computer software to make a pre-selection and for candidates to put photos and dates of birth on their CVs.
Recruiters are not supposed to use algorithms to filter out older applicants, but Geraldine is in no doubt that they do.
Because of age as well?
How does this make you feel?
This makes me feel that when you're 50, it's very difficult to continue to do what you love.
Stats published in July show just 60 of individuals aged 55 to 64 are in work compared, for example, to 71 in the UK.
And if you home in to the 60 to 64 age range, the employment rate plummets to 39 compared to 57 in the UK.
Patrice Debrassia is the associate director of a consultancy firm called Oasis, which provides career management advice.
We are a long way from ancient Greece, where the senior was a wise person, a knowledgeable person, the reference person.
When we meet a senior, the best thing we can think of to say is that they don't look their age, which shows immediately that we have a problem with age.
He says companies don't know what they're missing.
A 45-year-old senior, or a future senior, is not a has-been.
On the contrary, the study we conducted shows that they are more motivated, that they perform better in a company because they have more time.
No more sick children to look after, he says.
Often they no longer have direct family responsibilities.
Back in Géraldine Coquin's co-working space.
She tells me she wonders if she shouldn't have started her own company.
Then you don't have to worry about getting hired or fired.
Like Bernard Arnault, France's richest man, still running his LVMH luxury goods empire at the age of 76.
John Laurison reporting from Paris there.
And you can hear more on this story.
Just search for Business Daily wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Now Donald Trump has threatened to impose a 100 tariff on all films made outside the United States.
I spoke to the BBC's North America business correspondent, Michelle Fleury.
If it sounds familiar, that's because it is.
Back in May, he wanted to introduce 100% tariffs on movies made outside of the United States.
And the argument is that tax incentives offered by other countries are draining American productions from US soil.
And in particular, he singled out the state of California, saying that it was hardest hit.
And so this is his attempt of kind of reversing that and trying to sort of get films made in America.
But here's the rub.
Film production is enormously complicated.
So when he says made in America, there are lots of questions about what does that mean?
For example, does that mean a film shot on location in America?
But what if it's edited overseas?
Does it mean editing has to be done in America?
The graphics, the animation, there are so many components that make up a film.
And so that definition will be very important as to sort of how impactful this is.
And the other piece of this, of course, is we don't know when these will be introduced, as well as the how.
And was there any definition in the announcement today?
No.
So all we know at this point is just the post that the president made on Truth Social.
Now, you know.
The context perhaps, for all of this is that, at the moment, America is on the verge of a government shutdown.
And so, going back to May, when this idea was first floated, industry professionals at the time, those in Hollywood, the kind of big studio bigwigs and those who are working with the president on kind of issues relating to Hollywood suggested that well, rather than tariffs, maybe it was better to focus on tax incentives.
In other words, to try and offer the same type of cheap tax credits that other countries are to lure production back to America.
And that seemed to be the way things were moving.
Now, on the sort of potential eve of a government shutdown and a deadline looming to approve a new spending bill, it seems that tariffs are back on the table again.
And Donald Trump says that the American film industry has been stolen that's the word he's used by countries offering these tax incentives.
But is there any evidence for that?
I think if you ask most people around the world, they would still say that Hollywood has a fairly firm grip on the global film industry.
Well, I mean just to quote the actor Rob Lowe.
In a podcast he did several months ago, when this was first floated, he talked about the fact that, for example, in California it is just much more expensive to get stuff done.
And that countries around the world offer much bigger incentives, both in tax credits but then beyond that.
You know that's before you start talking about unions and different structures of film industries in different countries.
And so, taken all together, there has long been a view that LA, even though we think of it as the home of kind of moviemaking, at least American moviemaking, that actually productions there.
The number of productions has been very low for a while now.
And so it is a conundrum.
The question is, is tariffs the way to deal with this or tax?
And I think that's a debate that you hear a lot amongst film professionals.
Michelle Fleury there.
And that's all from this edition of World Business Report.
My thanks to the production team, David Arwood and Mitch.
And thanks to you for listening.
America is changing, and so is the world.
But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval.
It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.
I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story.
Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
