Swine flu is turning out to be a sales bonanza for drug companies - just don’t call it a windfall, says GlaxoSmithKline.

As one of the world’s top suppliers of both vaccines and antiviral medicine, CEO Andrew Witty resents the implication that billions of dollars of business simply fell into his company’s lap when the World Health Organisation declared H1N1 a pandemic in June.

“For me the word windfall means you’re walking down the street and something fell out of the sky,” he told the Reuters Health Summit. “We’ve spent the best part of 15 years investing for this situation and our ability to manufacture and supply potentially 500 million or so doses (of vaccine) is all because of these investments.”

U.S. healthcare reform is top of everybody’s agenda right now — but Barack Obama isn’t the only government leader chasing a new deal.

“If you are talking healthcare reform, it’s our daily life in Europe,” Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Sorensen told the Reuters Health Summit in New York.

“Prices are being impacted, there is parallel trade — all kinds of tricks that are aimed at reducing cost. Europe is very anemic at the moment.”

European governments have been pushing back against rising healthcare bills for years with a range of measures including price cuts, and ballooning budget deficits in the wake of the financial crisis are not helping one bit.

Have healthcare companies sunk as far as controversial tobacco companies in the public eye? One medical equipment maker thinks so.

Makers of medical tests, implants and other devices face anywhere from $2 billion-a-year in industry-wide taxes in the House of Representatives’ health reform bill passed on Saturday to $4 billion-a-year under a Senate version.
The Senate measure’s tax is not deductible and would be applied much like the tobacco settlement from cigarette makers years ago, said Beckman Coulter CEO Scott Garrett.

“That hurts, that stings to be treated like the tobacco industry,” he told the Reuters Health Summit in New York.

It could hurt customers — hospitals, patients and others — too. Companies have said they would have pass along any higher costs from the tax directly onto users.

Garrett, whose company makes clinical diagnostic tests as well as other research instruments, said he was “rooting for the House version,” which is tax deductible and phases in the charges starting in 2013.

A dozen Reuters reporters are covering the annual Reuters Health Summit in New York, featuring speakers from the world’s leading healthcare companies, including Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, plus top insurers and the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Follow the action as it happens:

Pharmaceutical companies are striking mega deals, diversifying and cutting costs to gird for the storm of patent expirations. There are signs that the industry is becoming more productive in its research labs after an extended dry patch. But investors are not convinced they are on the path to sustained profits: pharmaceutical stocks overall have underperformed the broader market in 2009, and trade in general at low premiums. 
 
Indeed, Wall Street skepticism persists in many corners of healthcare. The uncertainty over the outcome of U.S. health reform efforts has brought a cloud over the sector, none more so than for health insurers, which are at rock-bottom valuations. The weak economy weighs on medical technology companies, as hospital keep tight reins on budgets and people avoid elective procedures.
 
Some of the world’s most prominent CEOs and top executives from leading health care companies and organizations will discuss these and related issues at the Reuters Health Summit, which will generate exclusive interviews and key insights from our team of reporters as well as online video and blog postings, which will be immediately available only to Thomson Reuters clients during the Summit.

    With U.S. automakers close to collapse and financial services companies in turmoil, drug makers are positioning themselves as a premier American industry that deserves support from policymakers.
   “The pharmaceutical industry is a national treasure,” Joe Pieroni, head of U.S. commercial operations for Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo, said at the Reuters Health Summit in New York.
   “We are probably at the forefront of technology in terms of numbers of jobs, numbers of innovations, numbers of patents,” he added.
   Drug makers are touting their contribution to the health and economy of the nation as traditionally critical Democrats prepare a major effort to overhaul health care. The companies are expected to face pressure to lower prices often attacked as too high. Manufacturers say that could hurt their ability to invest in research for new medicines.
   Pharmaceutical companies are working “to convince people in Congress that, instead of bashing the industry, try to work with the industry in establishing the U.S. as truly a foundation for this high technology workforce,” Pieroni said.
   Other executives who spoke to the Reuters summit also waved the flag. 
   “Here is a chance for the U.S. to keep doing what it is very good at, which is to innovate,” Schering-Plough Corp Chief Executive Fred Hassan said.
   With the auto and computer industries, Hassan said “unfortunately a lot of that went over to Asia a long time ago. But we are the preeminent industry around the world … and this is a crown jewel of the U.S.,” Hassan said.
   The health-care sector is “a very important source of jobs and innovation and economic growth,” Pfizer Chief Executive Jeff Kindler said.

    Aetna CEO Ron Williams is one of the highest profile African American executives in the United States. On Wednesday he reflected on the election of Barack Obama, who is about to become the nation’s first black president.     
    “I thought it was terrific that the country was able to judge him on the basis of what they felt he could do for the country. I felt proud of the country. I thought it was an important milestone in the evolution of the country, and having done that, like the seat I sit in, now our shareholders want to know, ‘what are you going to do for us?’
    “I think he is off to a good start working on critical issues,” said Williams.

    Many risk factors for developing heart disease are well known, such as smoking, obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Last week, a study suggested that elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) levels in the blood may indicate higher risk of heart disease.
    AstraZeneca Chief Executive David Brennan has identified a few more risk factors and may be ready to start taking his own cholesterol medicine.
    “I don’t know about you guys but I’m having my CRP tested. Why not know? I’m 55 years old, Type A personality, an executive, that’s a risk factor right there. Working in the pharmaceutical industry is a risk factor,” Brennan said, only half joking.

From time to time, John Jenkins is puzzled by the press releases he reads from drug companies.
   

Jenkins, the director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of New Drugs, said when companies communicate an FDA action on their products to investors, they sometimes don’t convey it so accurately.  Click here to listen to his comments.
   

“We don’t monitor what the company says routinely about every action that we take,” Jenkins told the Reuters Health Summit in New York. “But there are times when we become aware of what the companies are saying relative to what we know is in the letters and we don’t think they add up.
   

“There are occasions where we call the companies and voice to them our concern that what they’re saying about what’s in the letter versus what we think the letter actually said are not consistent. There have actually been cases where we’ve referred some of those situations to the (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission).”
   

Jenkins said it was “very rare that we see something that we actually go to the trouble of referring to SEC.”
   

But, he said, “it’s less rare that we see something that we would we call the company up and say, ‘We noted your press release said that no new studies were required for approval, and maybe you didn’t read the letter to the end, but we asked you for a new study.’ “