President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday aimed at significantly lowering prescription drug prices in the United States. He called it a move to bring “fairness to America” and curb long-standing disparities between US drug costs and those in other nations.
In a public statement, Trump blasted the decades-long issue of Americans paying significantly more for prescription medications than citizens of other countries. He criticized pharmaceutical companies for justifying the price gap with research and development costs, claiming that these expenses have unfairly fallen on Americans alone.
“The Pharmaceutical/Drug Companies would say, for years, that it was Research and Development Costs,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial.
Trump described the practice as indefensible and announced a policy change that he said will result in immediate savings. The core of the proposal is a “Most Favored Nation” pricing policy, under which the US would match the lowest drug prices paid by any other developed country. This policy would lead to reductions of “30% to 80%” on prescription drugs in the United States.
Among provisions:
The Department of Health and Human Services is directed to facilitate programs that allow Americans to purchase drugs directly from manufacturers at the lowest global price, where legally possible.
The Department of Commerce and US Trade Representative must end foreign pricing policies that undermine US national security or economic fairness.
Within 30 days, HHS and other officials must inform drug manufacturers of price targets to align US prices with those of comparable countries.
If no “significant progress” is made, the president will have these options:
- HHS could propose a rule making plan to enforce MFN pricing.
- Drug importation from countries with lower prices may be authorized under section 804(j) of the FDCA.
- Antitrust enforcement could target any anti-competitive behaviors among manufacturers.
- Commerce and other agencies will consider actions on the export of drug materials tied to price discrimination.
- FDA may review or revoke approvals for drugs deemed unsafe, ineffective, or improperly marketed.
- Agencies will take coordinated action against global pricing schemes that disadvantage American consumers.
“This is something that the Democrats have fought for many years,” Trump said.
He said the change would not only reduce out-of-pocket costs for American patients but also save the federal government trillions of dollars in the long term.
Industry, including pharmaceutical companies, have opposed such actions, which may be met with legal action, as so many of Trump’s executive orders have.
Lower pharma prices has been a campaign promise of the Democrats for decades yet nothing ever improved. Trump didn’t mention big pharma much in his campaign (wise move) and did more today than Democrats have ever done.
I have two friends being kept alive by the extraordinary research of drug companies. One with Multiple Myeloma, and the other with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Both are getting medications that attack the cancer cells directly without the toxic side effects we saw with old chemotherapy.
Those advances came from research, expensive research. That happened when private companies set their prices in a free market.
Trump, the Democrat, is against free markets.