Trump Signs Executive Order on Drug Prices

President Trump signed a sweeping executive order on Monday setting a 30-day deadline for drugmakers to electively lower the cost of prescription drugs in the US or face new limits down the road over what the government will pay.

• The order calls on the Department of Health and Human Services, run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to broker new price tags for drugs over the next month. If deals are not reached, Kennedy will be tasked with developing a new rule that ties the price the US pays for medications to lower prices paid by other countries. "We're going to equalize," Trump said during a Monday press conference. "We're all going to pay the same. We're going to pay what Europe pays."
• Trump played up the announcement over the weekend, claiming in one post that his plan could save "TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS." But on Monday, the White House offered no specifics for how much money the administration anticipates could be saved.

• It's unclear what—if any—impact the executive order will have on millions of Americans who have private health insurance, the AP reports. The federal government has the most power to shape the price it pays for drugs covered by Medicare and Medicaid. Trump's promise of savings on drug prices came just hours after the House released its new plan to trim $880 billion from Medicaid.
• The nation's pharmaceutical lobby, which represents the top US drugmakers, immediately pushed back against Trump's order, calling it a "bad deal" for American patients. Drugmakers have long argued that any threats to their profits could impact the research they do to develop new drugs.
• "Importing foreign prices from socialist countries would be a bad deal for American patients and workers," Stephen J. Ubl, president and CEO of PhRMA, said in a statement. "It would mean less treatments and cures and would jeopardize the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America."
• Trump said in a Truth Social post Sunday that pharma companies had long argued that R&D costs should be "for no reason whatsoever, borne by the 'suckers' of America, ALONE." He added: "Campaign Contributions can do wonders, but not with me, and not with the Republican Party."

• Trump's so-called "most favored nation" approach to Medicare drug pricing has been controversial since he first tried to implement it during his first term. He signed a similar executive order in his final weeks in office, but it was struck down by a court on procedural grounds, and it wasn't pursued by the Biden administration.
• Some Democrats said they approved of Trump's plan, the Wall Street Journal reports. In a post on X, Rep. Ro Khanna said he was willing to introduce Trump's executive order "exactly as written" to become bipartisan legislation and asked for Republican co-sponsors.
• Americans are unlikely to see relief on rising drug costs quickly because of the order, said Rachel Sachs, a health law expert at Washington University. "It really does seem the plan is to ask manufacturers to voluntarily lower their prices to some point, which is not known," Sachs said. "If they do not lower their prices to the desired point, HHS shall take other actions with a very long timeline, some of which could potentially, years in the future, lower drug prices."

(More pharmaceutical industry stories.)