Trump: Lowering Drug Prices for All Americans

President signed his 4th executive order to lower prescription drug prices

Posted on Sep 14, 2020

President Donald J. Trump is working to ensure American patients are no longer forced to pay drastically higher drug prices than those in other countries. Yesterday, President Trump announced he would be releasing an executive order on “most favored nation” drug pricing that will tie the prices of the most expensive Medicare drugs to the lowest price available in economically comparable countries.

Foreign countries get much lower prices from drug makers, putting the burden on Americans to subsidize these discounts by forcing higher prices on the United States. As the President has noted, “Foreign nations often pay vastly less for the same exact drug – again, in the exact same box, from the exact same plant, from the exact same company.”

This executive order is the fourth of four executive orders announced in July to help drive down drug prices for American patients. In July, the president signed three executive orders to allow for the importation of lower cost prescription drugs from abroad, ensure patients see the value of discounts passed through to them at the pharmacy counter, and give low-income Americans access to extremely low priced insulin and EpiPens at federally qualified health centers.

Under President Trump, the FDA continues to approve a record number of lower price generics. These approvals saved patients $26 billion in the first 19 months of the President’s first term alone.

President Trump is driving down drug prices for American seniors. The 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.

In 2018, President Trump released a whole-of-government blueprint to help lower drug prices. Prescription drugs saw their largest annual price decrease in over half a century in 2018 thanks to President Trump’s efforts.