Hint.... this line from the story. They are pissed at the president. Result no meeting now!
A pharmaceutical industry source said "there was concern that this would not have been a productive meeting" and that companies are still discussing how to move forward after Trump signed a series of executive orders on Friday taking aim at drug prices.
One barrier to a productive meeting is also referred to in the article:
Another issue cited by the pharmaceutical industry source was the fact that the White House has not released the text of the executive order in question.
"We don't even know what we're negotiating against," the source said.
The White House has declined to say when it will release the text.
If he's not going to release the text of the order, presumably the one linking U.S. drug prices to overseas costs, then Trump doesn't want a productive meeting. No one goes into a meeting with the President, perhaps on camera, without knowing in advance what the WH position actually is.
You can check - it's not there yet.
Access Denied
And if you read the orders, this is typical:
Sec. 3. Directing Drug Rebates to Patients Instead of Middlemen. The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall complete the rulemaking process he commenced seeking to: [this is a goal]
(a) exclude from safe harbor protections under the anti-kickback statute, section 1128B(b) of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. 1320a–7b, certain retrospective reductions in price that are not applied at the point-of-sale or other remuneration that drug manufacturers provide to health plan sponsors, pharmacies, or PBMs in operating the Medicare Part D program; and
(b) establish new safe harbors that would permit health plan sponsors, pharmacies, and PBMs to apply discounts at the patient’s point-of-sale in order to lower the patient’s out-of-pocket costs, and that would permit the use of certain bona fide PBM service fees.
OK, so it's an order to complete something, we don't know what the final result would be, but it will exclude from the safe harbor "certain" reductions in price...."or other remuneration...." What does that mean? No one knows because there are no rules to look at. What are the new safe harbors? We'll see in a month, or two, or three, or in 2021, or maybe 2022. He's ordering HHS to at some undefined point establish some new rules doing something good, we are promised.
Bottom line is governing is hard, making changes to a massive part of our economy is hard, and it takes months or years of work, and Trump and his incompetent boot lickers aren't interested in doing that hard work, so we get this nonsense instead, which is a promise to do the work and turn it in later, if they get around to it. Now it's late July in a pandemic in an election year, and you can see how well the drug companies took this stunt - said, no thanks.
I don't think there's a single person on here that would think I enjoy the man. But if he manages to stumble into something that's actually good for you guys, the smart money says let him, no? 
