President Donald J. Trump Is Taking Action to Lower Drug Costs and Ensure That Americans Have Access to Life-saving Medications

whitehouse.gov ^ | July 24, 2020 | White House

[ransomnote]

 

EXPANDING ACCESS TO LIFE-SAVING DRUGS: President Donald J. Trump is taking action to greatly improve the affordability and accessibility of life-saving prescription drugs.

• President Trump signed four Executive Orders to massively lower prescription drug costs and increase Americans’ access to life-saving medications, including insulin.
• The first Order directs federally qualified health centers to pass along massive discounts on insulin and epinephrine received from drug companies to certain low-income Americans.
• The second Order will allow State plans for safe importation of certain drugs, authorize the re-importation of insulin products made in the United States, and create a pathway for widespread use of personal importation waivers at authorized pharmacies in the United States.
• The third Order will prohibit secret deals between drug manufacturers and pharmacy benefit manager middlemen, ensuring patients directly benefit from available discounts at the pharmacy counter.
• The fourth and final Order ensures that the United States pays the lowest price available in economically comparable countries for Medicare Part B drugs.
  • The United States often pays 80% more for these drugs than other developed countries.
  • It’s time to reduce the price Americans pay for these costly Part B medications, and absent successful negotiations with drug company executives this Order will be implemented on August 24.

LOWERING PRESCRIPTION DRUG COSTS FOR PATIENTS: This latest action builds on the President’s extensive efforts to drive down prescription drug prices for all Americans.

• Prescription drugs saw their largest annual price decrease in over half a century in 2018.
  • Average basic premiums for Medicare Part D prescription drug plans have fallen by 13.5 percent since 2017, saving beneficiaries $1.9 billion in premium costs.
• The Trump Administration has approved generic drugs at historic rates, saving patients $26 billion in the first 19 months of the President’s first term alone.
• In May, the Administration announced the Part D Senior Savings Model that will provide Medicare patients options to access a broad set of insulins at a maximum $35 copay per month.
• President Trump also signed legislation ending gag clauses that prevented pharmacists from informing patients about the best prices for the medications they need.

PRIORITIZING PATIENTS: Throughout his time in office, President Trump has worked to provide Americans with the highest quality healthcare at the lowest cost.

• President Trump has vowed to always protect patients with pre-existing conditions.
• The President has increased the availability of short-term, limited duration plans and Health Reimbursement Arrangements, empowering patients with more choice in healthcare.
• To ensure access to care while reducing the risk of COVID-19 exposure for both patients and healthcare providers, the President has drastically expanded access to telehealth services.
• The President has empowered patients with more choice in healthcare by increasing the availability of lower cost health insurance plans and Health Reimbursement Arrangements.
• The Trump Administration has also taken action to improve transparency in healthcare prices, encourage competition, lower costs, and put patients in charge of their health decisions.

The White House

 

[ransomnote]

I've been reading the DOJ website for some time now. I have seen prosecution of many massive pharma kickback/fraud rings and by now what must be billions of dollars in chronic fraud brought to an end. The same is true for medical billing fraud - so many massive cases of parasites feeding off taxpayer dollars.

WHen I see cases, I realize that we in America have no idea what medicine or medical treatment actually cost.

[norcal joe]

Oh great. Here come the dozens of whitehouse.gov and justice.gov posts for the day... :(

[ocrp1982]

No one has a gun to your head forcing you to read them.

[Viking2002]

'When I see cases, I realize that we in America have no idea what medicine or medical treatment actually cost.'

Oh, yes, I do, at least. My doctors and I have had many illuminating conversations about the subject, and they're as fed up with the pharma industry as the patients are. My wife and I both require multiple meds and cross swords with the insurance companies all the time. She has MS and it took almost a full year for her to get put on medication after she was diagnosed - the drug manufacturer and the insurance company got in a dogfight over who would pay what percentage for a drug which, at retail value, was over $2,000 a month. That is obscene. One of my meds (a non-insulin diabetic injection - I'm allergic to the preservative they use in insulin suspensions and can't inject it long term) had it's coverage dropped and the price shot up 400% overnight, so, I have to sit down with my PCP in the next couple of weeks and come up with an alternative. As my mother, who was a hospital RN for 42 years has said, it's all one big racket. Not to dive too much deeper into the legal narrative, I'd like to see a plain-spoken list of exactly who benefits and what drugs this will affect.

[ConservativeMind]

I like these EOs. Especially this one:

“The second Order will allow State plans for safe importation of certain drugs, authorize the re-importation of insulin products made in the United States, and create a pathway for widespread use of personal importation waivers at authorized pharmacies in the United States.”

A large variety of manufactures’ own drugs will be speeding right back into the US to compete against the locally high prices. If Canada gets the brand name drug at $18, it will come back to us around $25 to compete with the $250 cost we normally have.

Drug companies will see they are massively screwed and will have to raise prices everywhere—not just on us in the US.

[freedomlver]

Government just needs to get out of the business of healthcare. Under Bush 2 they passed the prescription drug bill and overnight drugs costs soared for no other reason than government was now footing the bill. Its basically a way for corporations to steal with gov consent.
I do applaud the move since this does something but the repealing of that bill would do a lot more across the board.

[LS]

About the only thing Sleepy Jeff Sessions did was prosecute Medicaid fraud and drug companies. Yeah, he did ok on MS-13.

But going back to 2018, Richard Baris was telling me the GOP was in trouble because of their failure to fix Obamacare. This could go a long way in winning back a lot of those voters.