Months after the United States applied 25 per cent tariffs to imported pharmaceuticals, the head of the Bermuda Health Council says Bermuda has not seen any provable impact, even though the US is a major supplier.

BHC chief executive Ricky Brathwaite conceded things could change, as pharmacists and wholesalers restock in the coming year.

“To date we have not seen that US tariffs specifically have resulted in abnormal or sustained price increases,” he said. “Drugs are expensive and they are getting more so, but not just because of tariffs.”

Dr Brathwaite has seen a shift in procurement patterns, with less reliance on US-based supply chains and greater sourcing through Britain.

“Shifts have largely been driven by supply stability and logistics, rather than clear tariff avoidance,” he said. “In some cases there has been sourcing directly from manufacturers or other international markets.”

He said where price volatility has occurred, it has tended to be product-specific and global, rather than tariff-driven. He pointed to the diabetes and the weight-loss drug Ozempic as an example of a medicine with a fluctuating price tag owing to unprecedented global demand, manufacturing constraints and supplier behaviour.

He said Covid-19 antivirals were another example.

“We initially got them for free from the UK and now they have gone from $0 to $1,400 a course,” he said. “These dynamics are affecting virtually every market, large and small.”

Targeted benefit expansions with Health Insurance Plan and FutureCare drug benefits coming this year will help to blunt the impact of high-cost medicines for patients, even where list prices fluctuate, the BHC chief said.

He added: “It will at least blunt the impact until policyholders may reach their limited maximums, which I must say are better than the zero coverage from a few years ago.”

He thought the main concerns this year will be less about tariffs in isolation and more about broader global pressures, concentration of manufacturing and a lack of a truly competitive marketplace locally, among other things.

Dr Brathwaite promised to continue to monitor the situation, particularly as US trade policy seems prone to unexpected shifts.

“Hopefully, based on what we are seeing now, Bermuda’s medication market will continue to be resilient,” he said. “We can start to aggressively tap into better affordability within that resilience, even acknowledging that everyone will not be happy about that financial direction.”