President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will sign an executive order aimed at dramatically reducing the cost of prescription drugs in the United States, pledging price cuts between 30 and 80 percent through sweeping policy changes.
In a statement posted to Truth Social, Trump criticized pharmaceutical companies for charging American consumers far more than patients in other countries for identical medications.
“For many years the world has wondered why prescription drugs and pharmaceuticals in the United States were so much higher in price than they were in any other nation,” Trump wrote. “Sometimes being five to ten times more expensive than the same drug, manufactured in the exact same laboratory or plant, by the same company.”
The new executive order, which Trump said he will sign at the White House on Friday at 9:00 am, will implement a “Most Favored Nation” pricing policy. Under this rule, the US government would require drug makers to match the lowest price charged for the same drug in any developed country.
“Prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced, almost immediately, by 30% to 80%,” Trump said. “They will rise throughout the world in order to equalize and, for the first time in many years, bring fairness to America.”
Trump also took aim at the pharmaceutical industry’s longstanding justification for high US prices, particularly the argument that American patients help subsidize global research and development costs.
“The pharmaceutical/drug companies would say, for years, that it was research and development costs... borne by the ‘suckers’ of America, alone,” he said. “Campaign contributions can do wonders, but not with me, and not with the Republican Party.”
Trump called the order one of the “most consequential” in US history and said the measure will not only save American patients money but also reduce overall healthcare spending by “trillions of dollars.”
