The public pays more for prescription drugs than patients in other high-income countries — 36% more, according to an authoritative study. Those higher prices have been a painful reality for decades. Politicians of both parties have said they’d do something about it. But nothing ever happened.
President Donald Trump proved otherwise. He has delivered a rapid revolution in drug pricing – and he’s done so through bold and visionary leadership. Critics who refuse to give him credit are nothing more than political grandstanders — the same grandstanders that stifle meaningful policy reform in Washington time and time again.
The conventional wisdom has always been that elected officials couldn’t defeat the pharmaceutical industry. But Trump has never been afraid to break with the conventional wisdom.
He advanced the principle of fairness through “most favored nation” pricing. He asked a simple question: Why should Americans pay dramatically more for the same drugs than patients in Europe or Canada?
By tying U.S. prices to those paid abroad, Trump challenged global price discrimination that had quietly punished consumers for years.
The first spark of reform came last July when he declared that “this unacceptable burden” of high drug prices “on hardworking American families ends with my Administration.” He sent letters to 17 large drug companies and called on them to reduce their prices, so they would be in line with what they charge in other developed countries.
“If you refuse to step up,” he said, the federal government “will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices.” That got their attention. Companies started striking deals with Trump because they knew the old rules didn’t apply. And the savings were massive for patients purchasing through TrumpRX.
Boehringer Ingelheim said it would reduce the price of its Type 2 diabetes medication, Jentadueto, from $525 to $55. Novartis said it would reduce the price of its multiple sclerosis medication, Mayzent, from $9,987 to $1,137. And Sanofi said it would reduce the price of its prescription blood thinner, Plavix, from $756 to $16.
Trump has continued to deliver concrete results that will help millions of people, particularly seniors and working families struggling with chronic illness. In the past few days, a website has gone live, www.TrumpRX.gov, where the public can find more than 40 low-priced drugs.
What’s more, the pharmaceutical manufacturers have committed to invest at least $150 billion in U.S. manufacturing in the near term. That’s going to translate to high-paying jobs for U.S. citizens.
Several companies have also agreed to donate key products to America’s Strategic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Reserve. This will reduce dependence on foreign nations and enable the United States to maintain an adequate supply of pharmaceutical ingredients in the event of an emergency.
Trump understood a simple truth that his predecessors either ignored or tiptoed around: the drug-pricing system was not operating as efficiently as it could have been. Pharmacy benefit managers, the companies in charge of negotiating drug pricing for business and federal government health plans, were no different in this respect.
Here again, the president — along with his FTC Chair, Andrew Ferguson — interceded. On Feb. 4, they reached a settlement with one of the PBMs that, among other things, secured lower insulin prices and secured more drugs covered under TrumpRx. Because of this deal, PBMs are in an even greater position to save consumers thousands of dollars annually, just as they did in 2016, when the Government Accountability Office found they reduced Medicare Part D spending by $29 billion, or 20%.
The lesson is clear: lowering drug prices does not require surrendering to socialized medicine. Instead, progress can come from the kind of political courage and leadership Trump shows day in and day out.
INFLATION DROPPED TO 2.4% IN JANUARY IN RELIEF FOR TRUMP
Left-wing ideologues can’t accept that Trump has just delivered a massive drop in drug prices — something they’ve been demanding for decades. If they can swallow their pride and give him credit, the country could realize progress on a host of other issues where reform is needed.
Ken Blackwell is an adviser to the Family Research Council, a chairman at the America First Policy Institute, and a former member of the Trump transition team. He is a former Mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, Ohio Treasurer and secretary of state, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.