Candidate Trump had a lot to say about how big pharmaceutical companies were ripping taxpayers off and how he was going to save us "billions and billions and billions of dollars" by making Medicare negotiate prices on prescription drugs. Well, Friday is his big speech about his plan to reduce drug prices. Guess what?
The White House will issue a blueprint that represents “the most comprehensive plan to tackle prescription drug affordability of any president,” a senior official told journalists on Thursday night.
Asked if the plan would include direct negotiations by Medicare, the official said, “No, we are talking about something different.”
“We are not calling for Medicare negotiation in the way that Democrats have called for,” the official said later. “We clearly want to make important changes that will dramatically improve the way negotiation takes place inside the Medicare program.”
Or not calling for Medicare negotiation in the way Trump called for it. Instead, what Trump will call for is far less meaningful. That includes pressuring foreign countries which "use socialized health care to command unfairly low prices from U.S. drugmakers," according to White House talking points, to relax their drug price controls. Because that will work. Foreign leaders will surely be falling all over themselves to raise drug prices in their own systems for Trump. It will also include some regulatory changes that sound an awful lot like what the Obama administration was using to try to reduce costs in the Medicare system, including simplifying the "complicated scheme of rebates and payments among insurance companies, drugmakers and a group of middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers." What's not going to be happening is anything that will actually threaten drugmakers' profits.
In fact, what is happening in this administration is an effort to help those drug companies that Trump already helped with the tax scam, from which the big pharmaceuticals are reaping billions. Or the Food and Drug Administration's expected action to give drug companies even more leeway for pitching prescriptions on television. It's a "free speech" issue, don't you know.