Trump Called Price Controls ‘Communist.’ Now He’s Ordering Them for Prescription Drugs.
This week, President Donald Trump issued an order he says will bring down Americans’ prescription drug prices. The order will likely have little effect, but it’s a perfect example of the government price controls that Trump and members of his administration once compared to socialism and fascism.
On Monday, Trump issued an executive order directing the secretary of health and human services within 30 days to “communicate most-favored-nation price targets to pharmaceutical manufacturers to bring prices for American patients in line with comparably developed nations.” Most favored nation (MFN) status means a country is treated the same in a negotiation as whoever is getting the best deal. If enacted across the board, Trump’s order would mean pharmaceutical companies must sell drugs to Americans at the lowest prices they were offering anybody else in the world.
“Trump does not in any way suggest those price targets would apply only to the prices the government pays for medicines,” writes Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute.
The order also directs agencies to take action against manufacturers that don’t comply. “If necessary, we’ll investigate the drug companies, and we’ll, in particular, investigate the countries that are doing this,” Trump said on Monday.
In a post on Truth Social over the weekend, Trump said that as a result of the order, “Prescription Drug and Pharmaceutical prices will be REDUCED, almost immediately, by 30% to 80%.” On Monday, he said it would bring down costs “60, 70, 80, 90 percent, but actually more than that if you think about it…mathematically.” The order complains that “drug manufacturers deeply discount their products to access foreign mark
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