Trump offers glimpse of ‘blueprint’ for cutting drug prices
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump vowed Friday to cut out the middlemen to reduce the soaring prices of prescription drugs, but his long-awaited address on the issue fell short of a campaign pledge to let the government directly negotiate lower prices.
Describing his plan as the “most sweeping action in history” to lower pharmaceutical prices, Trump said his administration is considering a number of ideas to crack down on abuses in the drug approval process and lower out-of-pocket costs for consumers.
“We will have tougher negotiation, more competition and much lower prices at the pharmacy counter,”
Trump said in a Rose Garden address closely watched by drug companies and patient groups. “And it will start to take effect very soon.”
Trump said his proposal would ban “gag rules,” in which pharmacists are prohibited from telling customers that prices on some drugs would be lower if they paid in cash rather than through an insurance company. The president also reiterated a promise to pressure other countries, through trade negotiations, to raise their prices on drugs.
Officials said that the administration’s “blueprint” on drugs includes dozens of ideas but that it would likely take months before they take effect. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the idea was to “begin a national dialogue on the issue.” It is not clear what, if any, actions the administration would implement immediately.
Patient advocates noted Trump did not embrace the idea of allowing Medicare to use its purchasing power to lower prices, an idea he said he supported during the campaign.
“Trump’s few tough words for pharma are a coverup for the sweetheart deal he is really offering the giant corporations that raise prices on Americans by the day,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program. “The White House plan does little to make medicines affordable or challenge the core problem of high drug prices: pharma’s monopoly power and abuse.”
Advocates have criticized practices in which drug companies can game the drug approval process, such as by extending patents through slight tweaks to their products. By doing so, companies that own namebrand drugs can slow the approval of cheaper, generic versions that inject competition into the market.
Trump promised to get “tough on the drug makers that exploit our patent laws to choke out competition,” but he offered little in the way of specifics of how that would happen.
The drug industry has been closely scrutinizing the administration’s remarks for months. The president’s speech came days after revelations that Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis paid Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, $1.2 million for insight into how the administration would approach health care policy.
As a presidential candidate, Trump embraced allowing the government to negotiate directly with drug companies to lower prices in the Medicare program — an idea supported by Democrats and generally opposed by Republicans. As president, though, Trump abandoned the idea months ago in favor of more traditional GOP ideas.
Democrats, who held events on Capitol Hill this week to call attention to that turnaround, blasted what they characterized as piecemeal policies.
“I think very expensive champagne will be popping in drug company boardrooms across the country tonight,” said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., who met one on one with Trump last year to discuss drug prices.