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No, Bernie Doesn't Think Trump's Executive Order Is Going To Lower The Price of Drugs In Real Life


Only one of these guys REALLY wants drug prices to come down
Only one of these guys REALLY wants drug prices to come down


At the White House yesterday, when RFK Jr. discussed Trump’s executive order lowering the price of drugs, he tacitly acknowledged that Trump was implementing Bernie’s long-standing proposal to tie the price of meds to the international markets. Bernie gave Trump a nod for the order but he issued a statement that though he agrees with Señor Trumpanzee that “It is an outrage that the American people pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. It is beyond unacceptable that we pay, in some cases, ten times more for the same exact prescription drugs than people in other major countries… the problem is not that the price of prescription drugs is too low in Europe and Canada. The problem is that the extraordinarily greedy pharmaceutical industry made over $100 billion in profits last year by ripping off the American people. Further, as Trump well knows, his executive order will be thrown out by the courts. If Trump is serious about making real change rather than just issuing a press release, he will support legislation I will soon be introducing to make sure we pay no more for prescription drugs than people in other major countries. If Republicans and Democrats come together on this legislation, we can get it passed in a few weeks.”


So not exactly the endorsement some in the media are claiming. “Under the order issued Monday, drugmakers have 30 days to reduce prices or face new restrictions on how much the government will pay for medications.” Trump’s allies from the big pharmaceutical companies say “the plan amounts to government price controls and could hinder medical innovation. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America called the executive order ‘a bad deal for American patients and workers.’ It warned the plan would make the U.S. ‘more reliant on China for innovative medicines.’ Biotech industry advocates also warned shifting to Trump’s ‘most favored nation’ pricing could prove to be devastating for medical innovation firms.”


The White House claims that price could go down between 30 and 80% but… there will be pushback from congressional Republicans and the pharmaceutical companies will definitely sue. “A similar effort during Trump’s first term was struck down.”


Former pharmaceutical executive William Soliman called bullshit on what Trump says he’s doing since the “order relies on voluntary compliance from companies and international cooperation... ‘The issue really with this executive order is it’s missing a lot of details. So it’s a lot of bark and no bite, from my perspective, because (at) the end of the day, you not only [have] to get the pharma companies to agree, but you’ve also got to get the other countries to tell you what the retail prices [are],’ Soliman said. ‘There’s actually nothing to force them to do that, right? So for a lot of these pharmaceutical companies, there’s very little incentive, obviously, to do that.’… [For those not on Medicare], it’s not going to actually make much of a difference… There could be a higher co-pay, because the pharma company may offset the loss of revenue on the Medicare side, which is about 20% of the country,’ he added.”


Is this really just more Trumpist smoke and mirrors? The big pharmaceutical executives put a lot of money into his 2024 campaign and he made a lot of explicit promises to them. Is he going to screw them over? Or is he counting on congressional Republicans and conservatives judges to strike this down so he can tell MAGA votes that he tried but…



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