Posted on 05/07/2025 3:44:59 PM PDT by mbrfl
President Donald Trump plans to revive an effort to dramatically slash drug costs by tying the amount the government pays for some medicines to lower prices abroad, three people familiar with the matter told POLITICO.
Trump early next week is expected to sign an executive order directing aides to pursue the initiative, called “most favored nation,” for a selection of drugs within the Medicare program. The idea would use the administration’s authorities to force prices down.
The proposal has not been finalized and could still change as aides work through the specifics, said the people involved in the plan, who were granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations. Trump has not yet personally approved the plan.
The president on Tuesday teased a “very big announcement” within the next week that one of the people familiar characterized as a reference to the drug pricing proposal. The other two did not know whether it was the big announcement but confirmed the drug price plan was likely to be announced in the next week.
“We’re going to have a very, very big announcement to make — like as big as it gets,” Trump said. “It will be one of the most important announcements that have been made in many years about a certain subject.”
Should Trump go ahead with the order, it would represent a major confrontation between the White House and the deep-pocketed pharmaceutical industry.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
The article suggests that this may be the big announcement Trump teased out earlier in the week but can't confirm it.
I want to see commies come out against this one..the only ones who will be against it are the ones who are in big pharma’s big deep pockets
Price controls. Who doesn’t love them ?
“most favored nation”
This is not uncommon in buy-sell relationships. If you sell to many customers, your best customers aren’t going to take too kindly to you giving better prices to smaller customers. Some of them will have “most favored nation” clauses. With medicine it may be a little different, especially when they are on patent and cannot be replaced by something generic. Still, Trump is right. We have been subsidizing research, with grants and via the public markets... we should get the best prices.
Except that in this instance, the federal government is also the industries largest customer. This is the CEO of the federal government bargaining for the best price, as any CEO would do. Being that this is coming from the Executive branch and not Congress, it’s not price-control, strictly speaking. It’s a setting procurement policy.
the federal government is also the industries largest customer.
No it is not.
Go ahead, have the federales control prices for you.
Tell me again why you are on Free Republic ?
So you are against free market capitalism ?
So tell me why you are here on Free Republic ??
>>”Nice nuance. Procurement policy.”
What do you want me to do? Lie? If you want the government to get out of the business of providing health insurance to millions of Americans, that’s one thing. If you want to continue a level of government spending on healthcare that’s unsustainable, that’s another.
Which drug ? Which company ? Do the feds get to pick and choose ?
Same thing I was thinking. How is the left going to frame their hatred of this policy?
They will come out and say “This is a constitutional crisis, how dare Trump go after big pharma, they pay our damn salaries”
>>”No, I want you to explain why you think it is ok for the FEDGOV to implement price controls on a privately controlled company.”
Who said I want that? We haven’t even seen the plan yet, but based on preliminaries the plan isn’t going to force pharma companies to lower their prices on private purchasers. And if the plan is similar to other proposals Trump has floated before, it won’t even force them to lower their prices to the federal government.
If they want to raise prices to foreign countries, they’ll be able to leave domestic pricing at current levels.
The entire rest of the world appears to like them; shall we write a big L on our foreheads here and subsidize their choice out of some nobility?
I get my prescriptions from Canada dirt cheap
Good move!
I used to get my Lactulose from Canada(Side effect works great for constipation) it was dirt cheap..my Mom gets her medication from UnitedHealthcare(Only for her meds) they raised the price for her meds, last yr Pepsid 180 pills was 5 bucks, now its 15
What on earth makes you think I am against free market capitalism? You are reading far more into a short comment than necessary.
Actually what I was thinking at the time was that most big pharma these days have slashed their R&D budgets to the bone. What they do now is watch the little biotech and drug companies develop something in their niche, something funded often from grants, public funding, private funding, etc... and when that drug starts to show real promise - somewhere around the Phase 2b phase for very strong looking drugs - they just buy the company. Big pharma took much of the upfront R&D risk off themselves and stuck it onto the taxpayer, grantors, and public/private investors.
The US does have higher costs of business. Unless I’m mistaken, those other countries don’t have our lawyers to feed.
I take only one prescription drug and my medical plan covers it.
Also prescription eye drops with $10 copay. One bottle lasts for months.
Charging Americans what they charge to everyone overseas sounds pretty fair to me.
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