President Donald Trump said he will set a 30-day deadline for drugmakers to lower the cost of prescription drugs in a sweeping executive order that he will sign on Monday.
The order calls on the health department, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to broker new price tags for drugs, according to a White House official who briefed the press on the executive order ahead of its signing.
If a deal is not reached, a new rule will kick in that will tie the price of what the U.S. pays for medications to lower prices paid by other countries.
Trump teased the executive order in a social media post on Sunday evening.
“I will be instituting a MOST FAVORED NATION’S POLICY whereby the United States will pay the same price as the Nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the World,” the Republican president posted, pledging to sign the order on Monday morning at the White House.
The federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on prescription drugs, injectables, transfusions and other medications every year through Medicare, which covers nearly 70 million older Americans.
The nation’s leading pharmaceutical lobby on Sunday pushed back, calling it a “bad deal” for American patients. Drugmakers have long argued that any threats to their profits could impact the research they do to develop new drugs.
“Importing foreign prices will cut billions of dollars from Medicare with no guarantee that it helps patients or improves their access to medicines,” Stephen J. Ubl, the president and CEO of PhRMA, said in a statement. “It jeopardizes the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America, making us more reliant on China for innovative medicines.”
Trump’s so-called “most favored nation” approach to Medicare drug pricing has been controversial since he first tried to implement it during his first term. He signed a similar executive order in the final weeks of his presidency, which called for the U.S. to only pay a lower price that other countries pay for drugs administered in a doctor’s office.
But even that more narrow executive order faced hurdles, with a court order that blocked the rule from going into effect under President Joe Biden’s administration. The pharmaceutical industry argued that Trump’s 2020 attempt would give foreign governments the “upper hand” in deciding the value of medicines in the U.S.
Trump has played up the announcement, saying it will save taxpayers big money.
“Our Country will finally be treated fairly, and our citizens Healthcare Costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before,” Trump added.
He has touted immediate savings, but the health department is limited in its control of drug pricing. It has the most authority around the drug prices it pays for Medicare and Medicaid, which covers roughly 80 million poor and disabled Americans. The price that millions of Americans covered by private insurance pay for drugs is harder for the agency to manipulate.
Trump boasted in his post that the plan will save “TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS.”
The executive order will also encourage the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to examine enforcement action the agencies can take around the pricing of drugs.
The U.S. routinely outspends other nations on drug prices, compared with other large and wealthy countries, a problem that has long drawn the ire of both major political parties, but a lasting fix has never cleared Congress.
Trump came into his first term accusing pharmaceutical companies of “getting away with murder” and complaining that other countries whose governments set drug prices were taking advantage of Americans.
On Sunday, Trump took aim at the industry again, writing that the “Pharmaceutical/Drug Companies would say, for years, that it was Research and Development Costs, and that all of these costs were, and would be, for no reason whatsoever, borne by the ‘suckers’ of America, ALONE.”
Referring to drug companies’ powerful lobbying efforts, he said that campaign contributions “can do wonders, but not with me, and not with the Republican Party.”
“We are going to do the right thing,” he wrote.
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