The president, Donald Trump, signed on Monday an executive order on Monday that seeks to reduce the costs of some medications, reviving a failed effort of his first mandate on a subject he has spoken since even becoming a president.
“We are not going to continue subsidizing medical aid in other countries, where a price fraction is paid that costs here and will not tolerate the speculation of pharmaceutical products,” said the president on Monday. “I am acting against the most powerful industry in the world,” he said.
The order of the Republican orders the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to link what I will pay for the medicines administered in medical consultations at the lowest price paid by other countries. Trump believes that the order would reduce prices “Almost immediately” between 30% and 80%: “I think this gives Republicans the opportunity to really make health care that is much better than Obamacare, and for less money,” he added.
The order came shortly after another measure relative to pharmaceutical products. Trump signed an order last week to promote the manufacture of pharmaceutical products in the United States.
But some experts doubt that the new order resists the pressure of the pharmaceutical industry.
“The idea of guaranteeing that the United States pays only other similar countries has good surveys, but it is controversial and probably faces a fierce opposition of the pharmaceutical industry,” said Tricia Neuman, executive director of the Medicare policy of KFF, a research group on health policy.
A “bad agreement” for patients
The main pharmaceutical pressure group in the country also opposed Sunday, qualifying it as a “bad agreement” for US patients. Medication manufacturers have long argued that any threat to their profits could affect the research they do to develop new medications.
“The Trump administration should focus on the so -called pharmacy benefits managers (PBM) to address the high costs of medicines,” said Alex Schriver, spokesman for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the commercial group of the pharmaceutical industry that filed the demand in 2020 against the original rule of prices of Trump medications.
“I will establish a more favored nation policy for which the United States will pay the same price as the country that pays the lowest cost anywhere in the world,” Trump said on Sunday in his social network, committing to sign the order this Monday morning at the White House.
“Trump has a long history in his first mandate to speak bigger about the prices of medicines than what his policies really did,” wrote Chris Meekins, an analyst at Raymond James, in a client note on Sunday night cited by the CNN chain. “The more great the executive actions proposed by Trump are, the less likely they are implementedsince successful judicial challenges will be much more likely. ”
The pharmaceutical industry argued that Trump’s attempt by 2020 would give foreign governments the “mango pan” when deciding the value of medicines in the United States. The industry has argued for a long time to force lower prices will harm the benefits and, ultimately, will affect innovation and its efforts to develop new medications.
Will Trump’s plan work?
It is likely that Trump’s proposal only affects certain medications covered by Medicare and administered in a medical consultation such as infusions that treat cancer and other injectables. But it could mean significant savings for the government, although the “trillions of dollars” that Trump presumed in their message can be an exaggeration.
Medicare provides medical insurance to about 70 million major Americans. Complaints about high drug prices in the United States, even compared to other large and rich countries, have caused the anger of both games for a long time, but a lasting solution has never been achieved in Congress.
But everything indicates that there will be few Americans who see the savings: it is likely that the plan only covers the medications of part B of Medicare, the insurance of visits to the doctor. Medicare beneficiaries are responsible for assuming part of the costs to obtain those medicines during the medical visits, and for those registered in the traditional Medicare there is no annual disbursement limit for what they pay.
Although some experts supported Trump’s approach, they asked how the administration legally apply prices reductions to private insurance medications. They also worried their ability to resist the legal pressure of the pharmaceutical industry.
“If this affects all medications for all people, it is much more ambitious, but the effects are much more uncertain,” said Tricia Neuman, executive director of the Medicare Policy Program in KFF, a health policy research group. “I would expect the pharmaceutical industry to launch all legal arguments against this proposal.”
Arthur Caplan, director of the Medical Ethics Division of the Langone Medical Center of the University of New York (NYU), said the Administration might establish more realistic expectations of what it can achieve.
Caplan said that immediate relief would be great, but argued that it is impossible for the United States to reach the lowest prices in the world.
“We are not going to get the price paid South Africa, Peru, Egypt, Bolivia and Laos,” Caplan said. “Pharmaceutical companies usually make huge discounts to very poor countries for humanitarian reasons that would not grant rich countries. The prices paid in the poorest nations have no possibility of being the price paid by the Trump administration. ”
Stacie Dusetzina, a professor of health policy at the Vanderbilt University of Nashville (Tennessee), worries that the policy can harm doctors and pharmacies if the price cuts are immediate.
“Retail pharmacies or medications administered by doctors buy their medications in advance to supply the shelves or have them available to treat patients,” he said. “What the pharmacy or clinic paid to acquire its medications is probably higher than the new proposed price, which means that they would lose money when those medications were supplied.”
In a call this Monday, an official seemed to clarify the comments of Trump on Sunday, pointing out that drug manufacturers “come to the negotiating table very soon” and that the administration anticipates “action” and “relief very soon”.
The officials did not say how this would affect the ongoing negotiations on the prices of Medicare medicines, a policy promulgated by President Joe Biden through the Law on Inflation Reduction.
In the last days of the Biden government, the Medicare and Medicaid service centers announced the following round of medication price negotiations. It is estimated that the first round of negotiations will save Medicare 6 billion dollars in 2026, when prices enter into force.
However, officials argued that the lowest prices achieved during the last administration were “inappropriate” and that Trump’s new policy would achieve more drastic price cuts.
“We will take measures to go beyond what has been achieved with the inflation reduction law,” said an official.
With information from NBC News and
