President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at dramatically reducing prescription drug prices, declaring that the United States will “no longer tolerate profiteering and price gouging from Big Pharma.”
Speaking at the White House, Trump outlined the core principle of the order, explaining that, “whatever the lowest price paid for a drug in other developed countries, that is the price that Americans will pay.” The president added that some prescription drugs will be reduced almost immediately by “50 to 80 to 90 percent.”
The president said the US has been subsidizing foreign countries’ healthcare by paying drastically higher prices for the same medications.
“Starting today, the United States will no longer subsidize the healthcare of foreign countries, which is what we were doing,” Trump said. “We’re subsidizing others’ healthcare, the countries where they paid a small fraction of what for the same drug that what we pay many, many times more for and will no longer tolerate profiteering and price gouging from Big Pharma.”
“Even though the United States is home to only 4 percent of the world’s population, pharmaceutical companies make more than two thirds of their profits in America,” he added. “So think of that with 4 percent of the population, the pharmaceutical companies make most of their money. Most of their profits from America. That’s not a good thing.”
According to the White House, the executive order directs the US Trade Representative and Secretary of Commerce to ensure that foreign countries are not engaged in practices that purposefully undercut market prices in the US. The order also instructs the administration to “communicate price targets to pharmaceutical manufacturers to establish that America, the largest purchaser and funder of prescription drugs in the world, gets the best deal.”
Further, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is directed to create a mechanism allowing American patients to purchase drugs directly from manufacturers at the “most-favored-nation” price. If drug manufacturers refuse to comply, the order instructs the secretary to propose rules mandating most-favored-nation pricing and take “other aggressive measures to significantly reduce the cost of prescription drugs to the American consumer and end anticompetitive practices.”
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was alongside Trump for the announcement, said he “never thought that this would happen” in his lifetime.
“We finally have a president who is willing to stand up for the American people,” Kennedy said.
