President Donald Trump announced Sunday that he will sign an executive order which he claims will reduce prescription drug prices by up to 80 percent “almost immediately.”
Earlier in the day, Trump heralded the announcement as “one of the most important and impactful” of his career.
The president said the order, which is set to be signed on Monday morning, will institute a “most favored nations” policy where the U.S. will buy drugs at a price matching the lowest rate paid by other countries.
The announcement did not detail how Trump plans to implement his plans or achieve such rapid savings.
The White House plans to pursue discounts on a selection of drugs purchased through the Medicare federal health insurance program, Politico reported earlier this week.
Attempts to lobby congressional Republicans to include similar provisions in a spending bill reportedly fell flat.
Ultimately, Trump and House Republicans were “not in agreement” on a drug pricing measure, Punchbowl News reports.
Americans tend to pay more for prescription drugs than peers in other wealthy nations, where many governments set single prices for treatments based on analyzing therapeutic benefits and prices paid by other nations.
A 2024 RAND report found that prescription drug prices in the U.S. are nearly three times higher on average than those in 33 other nations.
Trump attempted a similar drug price initiative in 2018 during his first term, though it was opposed by the pharmaceutical industry. A last-minute attempt to revive the idea in 2020 as Trump was leaving office was later rejected in federal court.
Now, even though the Trump campaign reportedly published then deleted a 2023 campaign video pitching the idea once again, the proposal appears to be back in some form for a fourth time.
“Our Country will finally be treated fairly, and our citizens’ Healthcare Costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before,” Trump added in his announcement on Sunday, claiming, “We are going to do the right thing, something that the Democrats have fought for many years.”
In fact, under the Biden administration’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare was empowered to begin negotiating drug prices directly with pharma companies for the first time, a provision the previous White House estimated would save taxpayers nearly $8 billion once fully implemented in 2026.
Drugmakers reportedly expect the Trump plan to apply to a wider category of medicines than the 10 treatments Medicare currently negotiates the prices for.
The Trump plan is sure to face stiff opposition from the pharmaceutical industry, which he acknowledged obliquely in his Sunday post, claiming, “Campaign Contributions can do wonders, but not with me, and not with the Republican party.”
The industry has long argued price caps could prove harmful and disincentivize research spending on new treatments.
“Government price setting in any form is bad for American patients,” Alex Schriver, a spokesperson for the the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, told Reuters of the Trump plan.
Elsewhere, Trump has floated adding pharmaceuticals to the many industries facing American tariffs.
While some Republicans may be wary of Trump’s drug-negotiation plan, others are supportive.
On Monday, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, introduced a bill alongside Senator Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, that would bar pharmaceutical companies from selling drugs in the United States at higher prices than an international average.
