On Monday, President Trump will sign an executive order aimed at reducing some drug prices in the United States by aligning them with what other rich countries pay, he said on Truth Social on Sunday evening.
The proposal that described, which alone cannot move federal policy, is what calls a model of the “most favored nation” prices. Trump did not provide details on which type of insurance would have applied the plan or on how many drugs would have targeted, but indicated that the United States should pay the lowest price among its peat countries.
“Our country will finally be treated fairly and our citizens' health costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought before,” he wrote in his social media post.
Most likely any plan of this type will be subject to challenges in court and it is not clear if the legal collection will pass, especially without actions of the congress.
In his first term, Trump tried without success to implement a version of this idea to medicate, the health insurance program that covers 68 million Americans who are more than 65 years old or have disabilities. This plan would have applied only to 50 drugs, administered in clinics and hospitals, which are paid to medicate. A federal court blocked him, declaring that the administration had skipped the measures in the decade process.
The pharmaceutical industry bitterly opposes the idea, which would almost certainly have cut its profits, and has put pressure against it while the discussions on politics have regained steam in Washington in recent weeks. The companies warned that this policy would lead them to spend less in the research, depriving patients of new medicines.
“The setting of government prices in any form hurts to American patients,” said Alex Schriver, an official of the main lobbying group in the pharmaceutical sector, Phma, in a note. He added: “politicians should focus on the correction of defects in the US system, do not import policies failed from abroad”.
The embrace of Mr. Trump of the idea distinguishes him from most of the Republicans, who tended to be skeptical on the setting of government prices. Democratic legislators have proposed versions of the idea.
Ameet Sarpatwari, a pharmaceutical policy expert at the Harvard Medical School, said that Mr. Trump was drawing on an idea that had a “populist charm”.
Trump has long complained that the United States pay much more than the other rich countries do for the same drugs. And he is right. In the United States, prices for branded drugs are three times higher, on average, such as those in the nations between peers.
Nonetheless, most of the research that leads to new drugs takes place in American workshops and hospitals.
Drug manufacturers generate a substantial majority of their worldwide profits from sales in the United States and generally design their corporate strategy in the US market.
Pharmaceutical companies argue that the highest prices in the United States have a further advantage: the analyzes financed by the sector have discovered that patients in the United States obtain medicines faster and with less insurance restrictions compared to those of other countries.