Trump says he’ll set 30-day deadline for drugmakers to cut prices of medicine

Washington: US President Donald Trump said he will set a 30-day deadline for drugmakers to lower the cost of prescription drugs in a sweeping executive order that he will sign on Monday.

The order calls on the health department, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to broker new price tags for drugs, according to a White House official who briefed the press on the executive order ahead of its signing. If a deal is not reached, a new rule will kick in that will tie the price of what the US pays for medications to lower prices paid by other countries. Trump teased the executive order in a social media post on Sunday evening. “I will be instituting a MOST FAVORED NATION’S POLICY whereby the United States will pay the same price as the Nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the World,” the Republican president posted, pledging to sign the order on Monday morning at the White House.

The federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on prescription drugs, injectables, transfusions and other medications every year through Medicare, which covers nearly 70 million older Americans. The nation’s leading pharmaceutical lobby on Sunday pushed back, 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 will cut billions of dollars from Medicare with no guarantee that it helps patients or improves their access to medicines,” Stephen J. Ubl, the president and CEO of PhRMA, said in a statement. “It jeopardises the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America, making us more reliant on China for innovative medicines.”

Trump’s so-called “most favoured nation” approach to Medicare drug pricing has been controversial since he first tried to implement it during his first term.