President Trump’s Blueprint To Lower Drug Prices

A BURDEN ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: Drug prices are being driven up unfairly, taking a toll on the American people. 

  • Excessively high drug prices, foreign freeloading, and a system rigged to reward list price increases, are burdening the American people.
    • According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States had the highest per-capita pharmaceutical spending in 2015.
  • Senior citizens pay more in Medicare Part B and Part D because government rules prevent health plans and vendors from negotiating the better deals seen in other markets.
  • Some hospitals that receive drug discounts under the 340B program, designed to help safety net facilities, do not provide meaningful levels of charity care to low-income and vulnerable patients, ultimately pushing up drug prices for patients with private health insurance.
  • Lower-cost drugs are kept out of the market by drug companies gaming regulatory processes and the patent system in order to unfairly maintain monopolies.
  • Lack of transparency in drug pricing benefits special interests and prevents patients from being able to make fully informed decisions about their care.
  • Other countries use socialized healthcare to command unfairly low prices from U.S. drug makers. This places the burden of financing drug development largely on American patients and taxpayers, subsidizes foreign consumers, and reduces innovation and the development of new treatments.
    • The United States pays more than 70 percent of branded drug profits among OECD countries.

TAKING ACTION TO PUT AMERICAN PATIENTS FIRST: President Donald J. Trump’s blueprint includes new actions and proposals to drive down drug prices for all Americans.

  • President Trump’s blueprint will seek to encourage innovation, while also promoting better price competition and addressing foreign freeloading.
  • The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will:
    • Take steps to end the gaming of regulatory and patent processes by drug makers to unfairly protect monopolies.
    • Advance biosimilars and generics to boost price competition.
    • Evaluate the inclusion of prices in drug makers’ ads to enhance price competition.
    • Streamline and accelerate the approval process for over-the-counter drugs.
    • Speed access to and lower the cost of new drugs by clarifying policies for sharing information between insurers and drug makers.
    • Avoid excessive pricing by relying more on value-based pricing by expanding outcome-based payments in Medicare and Medicaid.
    • Work to give Part D plan sponsors more negotiation power with drug makers.
    • Examine which Medicare Part B drugs could be negotiated for a lower price by Part D plans, and improving the design of the Part B Competitive Acquisition Program.
    • Update Medicare’s drug-pricing dashboard to increase transparency.
    • Prohibit Part D contracts that include “gag rules” that prevent pharmacists from informing patients when they could pay less out-of-pocket by not using insurance.
    • Require that Part D plan members be provided with an annual statement of plan payments, out-of-pocket spending, and drug price increases.
    • Work across the Administration to address intellectual property theft and foreign freeloading.
  • The President’s blueprint also seeks feedback about other potential actions, including:
    • Reserving certain Part D incentives only for drug makers that stop raising prices.
    • Ending Obamacare’s Medicaid rebate cap, which encourages higher drug prices.
    • Including drug maker copay discount cards in Medicaid best price calculations.
    • Making changes to the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program rules to remove barriers to innovation and competition.
    • Reducing incentives to deliver Medicare Part B drugs in the most expensive setting.
    • Requiring Pharmacy Benefit Managers to act in the best interests of patients.
    • Paying for value in Medicare to spur development of drugs that cure illnesses rather than simply manage symptoms.
    • Requiring beneficiaries to be told what their out-of-pocket costs will be prior to receiving a Part B drug or a Part D drug prescription, and whether lower-cost alternatives exist.
    • Requiring “safety net” hospitals paid under Medicare Part B to use their 340B drug discounts to provide care to more low-income and vulnerable patients.
  • The U.S. Trade Representative will prioritize addressing unfair intellectual property and market access policies in our trade agreements, so that partners contribute their fair share to innovation.
  • The Administration will publish a comparison of drug prices in the United States with those in other OECD countries, to examine freeloading.
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BUDGET PROPOSALS TO LOWER DRUG PRICES: The President’s blueprint includes proposals from his budget that would increase competition and reform Federal programs.

  • President Trump has proposed reforms to the Medicare Part D program, including:
    • Allowing greater flexibility in benefit design to encourage better price negotiation.
    • Offering free generics to low-income seniors.
    • Requiring plans to share a minimum portion of drug rebates with patients.
    • Discouraging plans from accelerating beneficiaries into the catastrophic phase of the benefit with costly brand name drugs.
    • Protecting seniors from catastrophic costs through a new out-of-pocket maximum, while ensuring plans are incentivized to limit excessive costs.
  • Medicare Part B reforms proposed by the President would limit payment for price increases that are above the inflation rate and cut incentives for doctors to write high-price prescriptions.
  • Reforms would ensure hospitals paid under Medicare Part B that provide more than one percent of their patient costs in charity care could retain a discount under the 340B program.
  • The President has proposed actions to maximize competition and innovation, including curbing abuse of FDA safety rules and the 180-day “first-to-file” exclusivity clock.

BUILDING ON ADMINISTRATION EFFORTS: The blueprint will build upon actions President Trump’s Administration has already taken to increase competition and curb high drug prices.

  • FDA’s 2017 generic drug approvals contributed to prescription drug buyers saving $8.8 billion.
    • These dramatic savings were driven in part because FDA set multiple approval records in 2017, including the most generic drugs approved in a year.
    • FDA launched a new program to educate doctors about biosimilars.
    • FDA issued new guidance to facilitate navigation of the generic drug approval process.
  • A recently finalized change to Medicare will save seniors an estimated $320 million in 2018 by reforming 340B drug payments.

Shared from Whitehouse.gov

RELATED: Support For Trump’s Opportunity Zones To Fight Poverty

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Jim Shaw
Jim Shaw
5 years ago

Thank you President Donald Trump, keep up your good works.

Bruce
Bruce
5 years ago

Harboring a fugitive IS AGAINST THE LAW!! The people responsible need to be jailed and heavily fined. The refusal to enforce laws for years is what got us in this problem. START ENFORCING THE LAWS! This includes liberals, too.

Vladilyich
Vladilyich
5 years ago

“Other countries use socialized healthcare to command unfairly low prices from U.S. drug makers. This places the burden of financing drug development largely on American patients and taxpayers, subsidizes foreign consumers, and reduces innovation and the development of new treatments.”

BOVINE FECES! I will use Canada as a documentable example. Except in rare cases, Canada’s healthcare DOES NOT include prescription drugs. However, the pharmacists and drug stores are MUCH less greedy than their American counterparts. My prescriptions from CVS in Detroit retail for $210USD/month. The identical prescriptions (same drugs, same doses, same manufacturers) cost $48CAD/month in Windsor at Shopper’s Drugs. Even the prices of common, over-the-counter drugs are being gouged BECAUSE THEY CAN! Forty years ago I paid $1,50 for a bottle of 100 5 1/4 grain Aspirin tablets. Two weeks ago I purchased a 100-count bottle of 5 1/4 grain Asprin.. $12.75. I live a couple hundred yards from a river where several willow trees grow. Next headache I have, I’m just going to chew on some bark!

The U.S. government has no intention of bringing pharmaceuticals into reality as far as price is concerned because America is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pfizer and Bayer. “Big Pharma” donated more to the elections in 2016 than all other sources combined. Congress is not going to kill the goose that is laying the golden re-election eggs!

As for pharma spending on “research and development”, that’s another crock! More people die each year from bad prescription drugs than in car accidents. Pharma contributes most of the budget for the FDA so that now, anything they want to pedal to the public is rubber stamped. It is more corrupt than the FCC and Democratic party combined ever dreamed of being. If a new medication doesn’t dissolve it’s way through a beaker, they put it on the market and wait a few years to see if less than 50% of the people they sell to die. If it’s less than 50%, they keep it on the market as long as it is profitable.

I had a daughter who was deathly allergic to bee stings (her heart stopped several times growing up) and she had to carry an AnaKit with her at all times. In the 1980’s I paid $20 per kit. Today, the retail for the same drug and dosage is over $400. When I was in college, my roomate was majoring in herpetology and we would go out in the evenings and collect rattlesnakes (I live in Arizona). In 1962 I paid $25 for an antivenin kit from Rexall that contained 1 dose. Today (even in Canada), 1 dose of antivenin for crotalidae runs over $1200…IF you can find a hospital that has one on hand!

If you’re honestly expecting to see the government get a handle on pharmaceutical price during your lifetime, you must b e living in Colorado or D.C. because you’re definitely smoking better dope than I am!

Gwendolyn De Koning
Gwendolyn De Koning
5 years ago

Continuing to work for the people, President Trump is holding true to his promises. He will go down in History as the greatest President ever!

Jimmie F Liles Sr
Jimmie F Liles Sr
5 years ago

Talk is cheap, show us some progress on this proposal .

R.J Holdman
R.J Holdman
5 years ago

My legal US citizen Phillipina wife has been trying for years to get a VISA to legally bring her aunt from the Philippines into the USA, with NO results from the folks in D.C., who are assigned to respond to such requests — SO, I’m thinking about having her aunt fly to Mexico & travel to a ‘sanctuary city’ in this country… Me reckons plenty of folks would see that we’d ALL be locked up quickly for breaking immigration laws… Yet those same folks get REAL grouchy if citizens of the USA fuss about ‘sanctuary cities’!!!

Sara Ouzts
Sara Ouzts
5 years ago

I HOPE Trump can do something to lower drug prices…..I have been ordering my medications from Canada for years and I feel so “un-patriotic” (sp) …..I am on BP & breathing medications and it is rather expensive. God Bless America!

LW
LW
5 years ago

Thank you I am sure you will find out whats really going on and be amazed at how overcharged we all are by peeling the onion back layer by layer. It’s about time THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!
I love you Mr. President and your family with taking this on. and all the other things that you have accomplished and still working on. Thank you

David Sunkle
David Sunkle
5 years ago

YES Mr. PRESIDENT. THE DRUG INDUSTRY IS and HAS BEEN OUT of CONTROL FOR A LONG TIME. THANK YOU AGAIN. FOR CARING ABOUT AMERICA. and TAKING ACTION. AMEN and GOD BLESS.

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