Over the weekend, President Trump announced his plan to sign an executive order Monday to cap prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices at the lowest cost offered to any other country.
While revealing the historic move, the president said with the help of his “most favored nation” policy he hopes to ensure “the United States will pay the same price as the Nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the World.”
“Our Country will finally be treated fairly, and our citizens Healthcare Costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before. Additionally, on top of everything else, the United States will save TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS,” Trump continued, in a Sunday post on Truth Social.
While signing the order, President Donald Trump declared Monday that the U.S. “will no longer tolerate profiteering and price gouging from Big Pharma” as he signed an executive order
“The principle is simple – whatever the lowest price paid for a drug in other developed countries, that is the price that Americans will pay,” Trump said at the White House. “Some prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced almost immediately by 50 to 80 to 90%.”
Trump said that “starting today, the United States will no longer subsidize the healthcare of foreign countries, which is what we were doing. 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.”
“Prescription Drug and Pharmaceutical prices will be REDUCED, almost immediately, by 30% to 80%. They will rise throughout the World in order to equalize and, for the first time in many years, bring FAIRNESS TO AMERICA!” Trump added in the social media post.
The pharmaceutical industry slammed Trump’s announcement, pointing the finger for high drug prices at pharmacy benefit managers and health insurance companies.
“This Foreign First Pricing scheme is a bad deal for American patients. Importing foreign prices will cut billions of dollars from Medicare with no guarantee that it helps patients or improves their access to medicines. It jeopardizes the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America, making us more reliant on China for innovative medicines,” said PhRMA president and CEO Stephen J Ubl.
