Prescription drugs<\/p>\n
Donald Trump<\/p>\n
Health care policy<\/p>\n
Tariffs<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n Facebook<\/p>\n Tweet<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Email Link<\/p>\n \n President Donald Trump is ratcheting up the pressure on major drugmakers to bring their US prices in line with the far lower ones available to patients in other countries \u2014 though industry experts don\u2019t expect the pharmaceutical companies to acquiesce.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump sent letters to 17 major pharmaceutical company CEOs on Thursday with a list of demands, including that the manufacturers extend so-called \u201cMost Favored Nation\u201d pricing \u2014 the lowest price paid for a drug in a peer country \u2014 to all drugs provided to Medicaid enrollees. He also wants the companies to guarantee that Medicaid, Medicare and commercial-market insurers pay such prices for all new drugs. The president gave the companies 60 days to comply.\n <\/p>\n \n The directive stems from an executive order<\/a> Trump signed in May, when he demanded drugmakers start offering US patients those lower prices or face consequences. Prices for some brand name drugs in the US are more than three times those in other developed nations, according to the administration.\n <\/p>\n \n In that executive order, he also directed the Department of Health and Human Services to come up with price targets within 30 days. But Trump implied that the discussions between HHS officials and the companies did not yield results that he found acceptable.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMost proposals my administration has received to \u2018resolve\u2019 this critical issue promised more of the same: shifting blame and requesting policy changes that would result in billions of dollars in handouts to industry,\u201d he wrote in the letters, which were posted<\/a> on Truth Social. \u201cMoving forward, the only thing I will accept from drug manufacturers is a commitment that provides American families immediate relief from the vastly inflated drug prices and an end to the free ride of American innovation by European and other developed nations.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cBut if you refuse to step up, we will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices,\u201d he continued. \u201cAmericans are demanding lower drug prices, and they need them today.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The May executive order outlined some potential ramifications if manufacturers do not make significant progress in lowering prices. Those included directing HHS to craft a rule implementing the policy, allowing more drug importation into the US, reviewing drug exports, and having the Food and Drug Administration modify or revoke approvals granted for drugs that may be \u201cunsafe, ineffective, or improperly marketed.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The pharmaceutical industry warned that Trump\u2019s demands could harm research and development, adding that China is threatening to overtake the US in biopharmaceutical leadership.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cImporting foreign price controls would undermine American leadership, hurting patients and workers,\u201d said Alex Schriver, senior vice president at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA. \u201cTo reduce price differentials with other countries, policymakers should rein in health care middlemen driving up costs for Americans and get foreign countries to pay their fair share for innovative medicines.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The stock prices for several of the companies that received the letters, including Eli Lilly, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, GSK and Amgen, slipped between 1.5% to close to 5% on Thursday. The S&P 500 Pharmaceuticals Industry Index closed Thursday down nearly 3%.\n <\/p>\n \n The president, however, does not have the legal authority nor the regulatory tools to require drugmakers to sell their products at \u201cMost Favored Nation\u201d prices in any market, said Spencer Perlman, director of health care policy research at Veda Partners, which advises institutional investors and corporations.\n <\/p>\n \n The administration could try to institute a mandatory \u201ctest\u201d of such pricing in Medicare and Medicaid through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services\u2019 Innovation Center, Perlman said. But that would likely face legal challenges.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s pronouncement puts drug companies in a bind, said Chris Meekins, managing director of health policy research at Raymond James.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cHe\u2019s trying to put public pressure on pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily do what he does not legally have the authority to make them do,\u201d Meekins said. \u201cAnd no pharmaceutical company wants to be the next Harvard University, being targeted with the full power of the United States government against them.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The end result may be higher prices or delayed access to medicine in other countries. But the effort is not likely to help many US patients, he said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMost people in America aren\u2019t going to see a single difference in the prices they pay for products,\u201d Meekins said.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s effort to establish a \u201cMost Favored Nation\u201d rule<\/a> for certain drugs in Medicare during his first term was quickly blocked by federal courts for procedural reasons before being rescinded by then-President Joe Biden in 2021. The May executive order goes far beyond that measure since it is not limited to drugs purchased by Medicare nor to a certain number of pharmaceuticals.\n <\/p>\n \n Notably, the letters are a step back from the sweeping executive order, which applied to all drugs in all markets, Meekins said.\n <\/p>\n \n Now, Trump is demanding that companies lower prices only in the Medicaid program \u2014 which will help states more than enrollees since they already pay little to nothing for medicine \u2014 and only on new drugs in the Medicare, Medicaid and commercial insurance markets.\n <\/p>\n \n In the letters, Trump also demanded that drug companies return revenue from operations abroad to lower prices in America through \u201can explicit agreement with the United States.\u201d Plus, he ordered the manufacturers to participate in programs to sell certain drugs directly to consumers or business at \u201cMost Favored Nation\u201d prices.\n <\/p>\n \n Drugmakers have long complained that foreign governments, which are more involved in price setting, demand very low prices to gain access to their markets.\n <\/p>\n \n It\u2019s not the only way the Trump administration is squeezing drugmakers \u2014 officials have also looked to impose tariffs on pharmaceutical imports<\/a>, which had been exempted from such levies enacted during the president\u2019s first term. The tariffs<\/a> could exacerbate shortages<\/a> of certain drugs, particularly generic medicines, and eventually raise prices, experts have warned.\n <\/p>\n \n This article and headline have been updated with additional reporting.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prescription drugs Donald Trump Health care policy Tariffs See all topics Facebook Tweet Email Link President Donald Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":113659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[210,1141,1142,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-113658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114960622045158710","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n See all topics<\/p>\n
\n <\/a><\/p>\n