2 weeks before election, Trump vows ‘revolutionary’ plan to cut drug costs
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump took his boldest action yet to lower drug prices, saying his administration is moving to stop “global freeloading” by foreign nations when it comes to the price that Americans pay for prescription drugs.
The announcement is a sign that the president and his aides are seeking to shift the focus to health care two weeks before the midterm elections.
In a speech Thursday afternoon at the Department of Health and Human Services, Trump said his administration would be taking the “revolutionary” step of allowing Medicare to directly negotiate prices with drug companies who he says have “rigged” the system, causing U.S. patients to pay more for their medicines.
“Americans pay more so other countries can pay less. It’s wrong. It’s unfair,” Trump said.
Trump’s remarks were the first as president at HHS and come at a time when health care is playing a defining role in the campaign as Democrats slam Republicans over whether they support protecting access to health care for people with preexisting conditions. He argued other countries were being “very disrespectful” by selling their prescription drugs to Americans for higher prices than their own citizens are paying for them.
Under the new approach, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to experiment with a new way of setting prices for most drugs administered through Medicare’s Part B program, which covers all doctor’s visits for seniors and the drugs prescribed to them during their visits.
HHS estimates the new pricing index — which the agency says would apply to 50 percent of the country would save Medicare $17.2 billion over five years. Medicare now pays the average sales price of a medicine in the United States, plus an extra fee based on a percentage of that price. Under the new model, Medicare would pay fees to doctors that are more closely aligned with what other countries pay.
The proposal is Trump’s boldest action yet to lower drug prices, which the president says has been a key goal of his administration. It suggests a more prominent role for the government in setting drug prices than many Republicans may be comfortable with.
It also highlights an increasing push by the president personally and his administration more generally to emphasize health care in the runup to the elections, an issue polls show is top of mind with voters. On Wednesday afternoon, the president signed sweeping legislation to tackle the opioid epidemic.
“It’s hard to take the Trump administration and Republicans seriously about reducing health care costs for seniors two weeks before the election when they have repeatedly advocated for and implemented policies that strip away protections for people with pre-existing conditions,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement.