Saturday, 19 April 2025

Trump Moves To Increase Competition In Pharma, Lower Cost Of Prescription Drugs


WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 07: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House on April 7, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Trump is meeting with Netanyahu to discuss ongoing efforts to release Israeli hostages from Gaza and newly imposed U.S. tariffs.Credit: Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday aimed at slashing out-of-control health care costs by attempting to remove inefficient government practices and encourage more competitive drug pricing.

The executive orders take a wide swath of actions that are intended to improve the Medicare negotiating system, increasing the “competition for high-cost prescriptions drugs,” and lowering the cost of insulin for low-income individuals. In a press call attended by The Daily Wire, a White House official said that “every action” laid out in the executive order is “meant to improve the efficiency of drug pricing in the United States.”

“My first term included numerous significant actions, including some of the most aggressive in recent history, to deliver lower prescription drug prices to American patients,” Trump wrote in the executive order. “The message was clear:  no longer would the executive branch sit idly by as pharmaceutical manufacturers charged patients in our Nation more than those in other countries for the exact same prescription drugs, often made in the exact same places.”

While House officials said that the executive order was intended to leverage “current programs to deliver meaningful cost saving.”

One of the goals of the executive order is to ensure that Medicare is getting the same prices that various providers are paying.

“Hospitals often get heavily discounted drugs, sometimes it’s as low as 35% lower, below what Medicare is paying,” a White House Official said. “There will be instructions in the EO to do a survey and then contemplate rule-making on how to align Medicare payment with the costs of acquisition.”

Part of the order includes updating the Medicare drug price negotiation program, and White House officials say they expect to “eclipse” savings from the Biden administration during the same time frame. The administration’s goal is to have 22% savings in the program’s first year, according to a fact sheet from the White House.

The administration also hopes to standardize Medicare payments for prescription drugs, including cancer treatments, “regardless of where the treatment is administered,” the White House said.

The Food and Drug Administration is also directed in the order to “streamline” approval of generic drugs and facilitate more importation of drugs from other countries like Canada. The executive order also commissions a report on “anti-competitive” behavior from pharmaceutical companies.

Another one of the key provisions of the executive order is resurrecting a program from the first Trump administration that officials say will allow low-income individuals and people without health insurance to get insulin as low as three cents a vial and $15 for injectable epinephrine from qualified providers through the 340b program. This program allows certain health care providers to purchase drugs at significantly reduced rates.

“What the executive order does is resurrect something that we had pursued last term, which is to ensure that those 340b discounts are being passed through for insulin and epipens to low-income individuals,” a White House official said on Tuesday. “I think that many of you are familiar with the fact that in some cases the 340b program, the acquisition cost of things like insulin are literally pennies on the dollar.”

That 340b program for insulin and epinephrine was ended by the Biden administration, which argued that it would raise prices for health care providers and “undue administrative costs.”

Health care costs have continued to skyrocket and have only worsened since former President Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress passed “Obamacare.”


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