US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order directing pharmaceutical companies to slash drug prices so they match those abroad. The order gives a 30-day deadline to drugmakers to achieve price targets, with Trump saying he will take further action to lower prices if those companies do not make "significant progress" toward those goals.
Trump said he's seeking to cut drug prices by at least 59 per cent -- and in some cases as high as 80 or 90 per cent through the wide-ranging order. "Everybody should equalise. Everybody should pay the same price," the President said.
He also accused the European Union of "brutal" tactics to make pharmaceutical firms sell drugs for lower prices on their territory -- meaning companies then raise prices in the United States to keep their profits up. "Whoever is paying the lowest price, that's the price that we're going to get," Trump said.
As part of his plan, the US aims to institute a "Most Favoured Nation" policy that pins the cost of drugs sold in the United States to the lowest price paid by other countries for the same drug. "Even though the United States is home to only 4 per cent of the world's population, pharmaceutical companies make more than two-thirds of their profits in America," Trump said.
"The European Union has been brutal, brutal. And the drug companies actually told me stories, it was just brutal, how they forced them," the Republican added.
He further claimed that American consumers had been treated like "suckers" and cited in particular the costs of the obesity-reducing drug Ozempic, which he said were vastly lower in Europe. He said during a conversation with an unnamed friend, he came to know the weight-loss injection cost $88 in London and that the same medicine in the US costs $1,300.
Issue Of Drug Prices In the US
Among developed nations, the United States pays the highest prices for prescription drugs, which are often nearly three times more than in other countries. In her first term as well, Trump had tried to bring the US in line with other countries but was blocked by the courts.
However, the plan mainly relies on the goodwill of pharmaceutical companies to negotiate their prices and can again face legal challenges, similar to his first term. The proposal comes as the president seeks to fulfil a campaign promise of tackling inflation and lowering prices for a host of everyday items for Americans, from eggs to gas for their cars.
What Trump's Order Said
If drugmakers do not meet the government's expectations, the Trump administration will use rulemaking to bring drug prices to international levels and consider a range of other measures, including importing medicines from other developed nations and implementing export restrictions, a copy of the order showed.
The order also directed the government to consider facilitating direct-to-consumer purchasing programs that would sell drugs at the prices other countries pay. It also directed the US Federal Trade Commission to consider aggressive enforcement against what the government calls anti-competitive practices by drugmakers.
Will It Work?
The executive order is likely to face legal challenges, particularly for exceeding limits set by US law, including on imports of drugs from abroad, health policy lawyer Paul Kim to news agency Reuters.
"The order's suggestion of broader or direct-to-consumer importation stretches well beyond what the statute allows," Kim said.
However, Lawrence Gostin, a professor of health law at Georgetown Law, believes such challenges are likely months away and will come after the Trump administration takes more concrete action to force companies to lower prices instead of the “scattershot threats” included in the executive order.
“At the point when there are actual consequences and we know what they are, and when companies feel that they have to lower the price of their drugs, at that point we're going to have a flood of litigation,” Gostin told Reuters.
The Federal Trade Commission has a long history of antitrust enforcement actions against drugmakers and other healthcare companies. Trump last month ordered the FTC to coordinate with other federal agencies to hold listening sessions on anticompetitive practices in the drug industry.
"President Donald Trump campaigned on lowering drug costs and today he's doing just that. Americans are tired of getting ripped off. The Federal Trade Commission will be a proud partner in this new effort," said FTC spokesperson Joe Simonson.
(With Inputs from Reuters and AFP)
