President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday, outlining a series of actions intended to reduce drug prices, including states to import drugs from Canada.
The policies were more modest than the proposals to reduce drug prices offered by Trump in his first term.
And one of its new directives could increase drug prices. He asks the Trump administration to work with the congress to modify a 2022 law in a way that could debut a negotiation program intended to reduce the expense of medicating for commonly used or expensive drugs.
This change has the potential to increase the costs for the government, because it would most likely delay the existing calendar so that some drugs become suitable for cuts at the prices of medicating.
Depending on how it is structured, the expense of medicines to medicate by billions of dollars could increase compared to disbursements pursuant to the current law. The negotiation program was approved by a Congress controlled by the Democratic and supported by the former president Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The executive order states that changes to the medicating price negotiation program should be “combined with other reforms to prevent any increase in overall costs to medicate and its beneficiaries”.
The experts of drug prices said that, with the exception of the medicine negotiation proposal, other directives in the executive order had the potential to save money for patients and government programs. None of the actions represented important changes that would lead to enormous savings.
A arrangement would reduce the co-patches that some people on medicate face when they undergo treatments such as chemotherapy infusions in some clinics and outpatient hospital sites. Another would give some low income people access to highly discounted insulin and epinephrine injections.
Tuesday’s executive order was the most important move that Mr. Trump’s second administration has done so far on drug prices.
He followed the decision of Mr. Trump to approach the imposition of rates to imported pharmaceutical products, which is likely that producers feel to transmit. This could force government programs, employers and patients to pay more for some drugs and could aggravate the lack of critical drugs.
Some of the directives, such as the change of the medicine negotiation program, would require the approval of the congress. The pharmaceutical industry has strongly opposed some of the ideas in the executive order, supporting others.
Trump has long complained that the United States pay much more than other rich countries for the same drugs. In particular, absent from the order was a recovery of a very favored nation price policy, which proposed in its first term aimed at making us more drug prices closest to those that the equal countries pay. Like many of the first -term policies of Mr. Trump on drug prices, his most favorite national plan was interrupted by the federal courts. Last autumn, the presidential campaign of Mr. Trump found the proposal.
Here is a distribution of some of the most remarkable parts of the executive order of Mr. Trump.
Eliminate the “penalty of pills”
The order directs Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health, to work with the congress to face a difference in the way some types of drugs are treated in the medicine negotiation program.
According to the law, the pills and other drugs produced through synthetic processes do not become eligible for the cuts at prices until they have been on the market for nine years. Drugs known as biological – created by living cells and often administered as an infusion – would not be eligible for 13 years.
The drug producers, who have made no success to the federal government during the program, bitterly call the difference a “penalty of pills”. They say that it discourages them from the development of drugs, because they have less time to build sales before price cuts enter, depriving patients of new treatments. They put pressure on the pills to be exempted from cuts to prices for 13 years instead of nine.
Legislators introduced legislation that would change the law to treat the two types of drugs in the same way.
The order of the President does not specify how many types of drugs should be free from cuts to medicate prices.
Tuesday, in a statement, Alex Schriver, an official of the main lobbying group of the drug sector, Phrmis, said that his organization would have worked with the Trump administration and the congress to “make advanced solutions that reduce costs and improve access for Americans”.
Biden officials supervised the first round of negotiations in the program, with consequent cuts at the prices that will come into force in 2026. The Trump administration is supervising the negotiations this year for lower prices in 2027 for drugs including drug loss drugs sold such as Ozimpic and Wegovy.
Tuesday the White House declared in an information sheet that wanted to capture more savings for the government with the medicating negotiation program than the Biden administration last year. It would be difficult to do if the congress reduced time during which medication can get lower prices.
Import of drugs from Canada
The executive order directs the Food and Drug Administration to improve the process through which states can apply to the imports of low -cost drugs from Canada.
In his first term, Trump created a path that allows states to pursue these imports. Based on the Biden Administration, the FDA approved an import program, in Florida. At the end of last year, Florida had not yet started importing drugs from Canada. The pharmaceutical industry opposes the idea because it would have cut its profits.
If Mr. Trump follows the imposition of rates to pharmaceutical products, it is unlikely that the import of drugs from Canada offered the same savings of the past.
Different Co-Pays in different clinics
The order provides that the rules are paid to equalize the commissions that doctors are paid to administer drugs to patients through the settings.
Currently, many medical practices owned by hospitals can charge higher commissions to medicate compared to independent practices, also for the same identical services. Since the beneficiaries of medicating are often responsible for a percentage of their medical expenses, those higher costs for visits are transmitted in the form of co-payments.
The efforts to equalize these payments have been largely under discussion for years at the congress, but they had to face the opposition from hospitals, who claim to request higher payments. The legislation approved during the Obama administration faced some of these payment differences.
Encourage cheaper scripts
Trump has ordered the FDA to formulate recommendations for the rationalization of the approvals for generic drugs and biosimilar, which are low -cost copycats of organic drugs.
The first biosimilant was approved in 2015, with more approved dozens since then. There was a widespread hope that biosimilars would move branded biological protected from patents, such as Humira for conditions such as arthritis, which sent drug costs increasing. But the patients were slow to pass and the savings did not materialize as quickly as many wanted.
Insulin for the poor
Trump has revived an executive order from his first mandate that directs the health clinics of the community to provide insulin and epinephrine injections at strongly discounted prices for certain low -income people, including uninsured.
The clinics opposed when Trump proposed the idea for the first time in 2020. The Biden administration soon frozen the regulation, saying that he created too much an administrative burden for clinics.