Trump: ‘American Patients First’ plan to lower drug prices
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump promised to “derail the gravy train” in the health care system Friday afternoon, at a Rose Garden speech where he unveiled his much-anticipated strategy to lower drug prices.
The 44-page blueprint called “American Patients First” proposes a laundry list of policy ideas.
The Trump plan includes changes to Medicare that could lower out-of-pocket costs for some seniors, a suggestion that drugmakers disclose their list prices on television ads and discussion about reforming the system of secret rebates negotiated off drugs’ list prices.
Trump lashed into the entire supply chain that lies between patients and drugmakers, including the little-known industry that negotiates drug prices and health insurers.
“We’re very much eliminating the middlemen. The middlemen became very, very rich, right?” Trump said. “Whoever those middlemen were – a lot of people never even figured it out – they’re rich. They won’t be so rich any more.”
Trump has criticized drug companies for having too much power and said Friday that the industry lobby “is making an absolute fortune at the expense of American consumers.” The proposals were “somewhat
gentler than many feared. We feel that healthcare supply chain stocks, in general, should rally on this outcome,” Eric Coldwell, a senior re-
search analyst at the financial services firm Robert W. Baird & Co. wrote.
The Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar acknowledged there would be no quick fix for high drug prices. “It’s going to be months for the kind of actions that we need to take, here. Again, this is – this is – it took decades to erect this very
complex interwoven system, “Azar said at a briefing at the White House. “We’re talking about entrenched market players, complex financial arrangements that have – would have to be redesigned.”
The pharmaceutical industry would benefit from one part of the plan, to force other wealthy nations to pay their fair share for drugs.
Trump touted the plan as the “most sweeping action in history to lower the price of prescription drugs.”
Trump’s drug pricing blueprint has so many different, technical aspects and will take long enough to implement that it could be hard for Republicans to sell this to voters as a big win, said Joseph Antos, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
“The Republicans’ issue here is that they need something for the midterm elections that the average person would look at and say, ‘Yes, that’s going to help me,’” Antos said. “And it would have to not be so complicated that you’d have to be an expert to understand what they’re talking about.”