Drug Prices

Trump’s four executive orders to lower drug prices: What to know

President Trump issued a handful of executive orders Friday that aim to lower prescription drug prices through a variety of methods, including allowing medications to be imported from other countries. “I’m signing four sweeping executive orders that will lead to a massive reduction in drugs costs,” Trump said during a press briefing at the White House. “[The measures] will completely restore the prescription drug market in terms of prices.” Trump claimed drug prices had fallen under his administration for the first time in more than five decades but added that he was determined to do more. One of the orders introduced Friday would deliver rebates from drug companies directly to patients for insulin and Epipens in a bid to prevent providers from pocketing the discounts themselves while charging low-income patients unaffordable prices. Trump said the price of insulin would come down to “pennies” per day. The second order would allow wholesalers and pharmacies to legally import prescription drugs from Canada and other countries, where the president has repeatedly alleged identical drugs are available at costs as much as 90 percent lower than in the U.S. The third order would bypass pharmacy benefit managers and other “middlemen” to deliver discounts for prescription drugs directly to patients. Trump said Friday that patients often never see these discounts from the manufacturer. A final “favored nations” policy would require Medicare to purchase drugs at the same prices paid by foreign countries, which Trump said will prevent the U.S. from continuing to subsidize the cost of research and development for the entire world. Medicare will leverage its purchasing power to negotiate prices – the goal would be to find a middle ground with other countries that allegedly pay less for the same prescription drugs. This order will not be signed until the end of August, which would give the country’s largest companies time to come up with alternative solutions.

Great news!!!     🙂

White House: Drug Prices Dropped 11 Percent Under Trump

A White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) report released this week found that drug prices fell by more than 11 percent under President Donald Trump. A White House CEA report found that President Trump’s actions have reduced prescription drug prices. The CEA detailed that, under former President Barack Obama, drug prices continued to increase and only started to fall after Trump took the oath of office. The CEA wrote that prescription drug prices fell more than 11 percent and well below general inflation. “In 2018, prescription drug prices even declined in nominal terms over the calendar year for the first time since 1972,” the White House council wrote. The CEA attributed much of this to the president’s signing of the 2017 Drug Competition Action Plan and the 2018 Strategic Policy Roadmap. The CEA said the reforms enhance “choice and price competition in the biopharmaceutical markets.” “We estimate that the results of these actions will save consumers almost 10 percent on retail prescription drugs, which results in an increase of $32 billion per year in the purchasing power of the incomes of Americans (including both consumers and producers),” the council added. The president’s progress on reducing the cost of prescription drugs follows as a Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll found that health care is the most important issue for all voters as well as swing voters. Swing voters said that health care was one of the most motivating issues for swing voters to participate in the 2020 presidential election. During the State of the Union address in February, Trump promised to do more to lower prescription drugs and called on Congress to pass Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act.

This is great news!!  For more, click on the text above.   🙂