Setbacks for president’s push to lower drug costs

WASHINGTON — After two setbacks this week, President Donald Trump is now focusing his drive to curb drug costs on congressional efforts aimed at helping people on Medicare and younger generations covered by workplace plans.

The White House on Thursday yanked its own regulation to ease the financial bite of costly medications for those on Medicare by letting them receive rebates that drugmakers now pay to insurers and middlemen. A congressional agency’s estimate that the plan would have cost taxpayers $177 billion over 10 years seemed to seal its fate.

Earlier a federal judge ruled that the administration lacked the legal authority to require drugmakers to disclose list prices in their TV ads. The ruling Monday blocked a highly visible change expected to have started this week.

Both price disclosure and the rebate idea were part of a strategy on drug costs that Trump announced at the White House amid much fanfare last year.

“This is a big setback,” said Peter Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The rebate rule “was not good policy [since] it would have increased spending on prescription drugs even if it mildly reduced out-of-pocket costs in some cases. But nevertheless this was a cornerstone of the blueprint.”

White House spokesman Judd Deere said the rebate proposal was withdrawn “based on careful analysis and thorough consideration.”

Deere said Trump is not backing away from his promise to lower drug prices, and the administration is setting its sights on bipartisan legislation. One idea would cap drug copays for people with Medicare, which would produce savings for seniors taking costly drugs. That’s another way to achieve a similar goal as the rebate plan.

“The Trump administration is encouraged by continuing bipartisan conversations about legislation to reduce outrageous drug costs imposed on the American people, and President Trump will consider using any and all tools to ensure that prescription drug costs will continue to decline,” Deere said in a statement.

While agreeing it’s a setback for Trump, John Rother of the National Coalition on Health Care said that if legislation could be worked out, “that might actually lead to a better outcome.” His organization is an umbrella group that represents a cross section of business and consumer groups.