Trump to sign the most preferred nation drug price regulation

President Donald Trump will revive a controversial policy on Monday that aims to reduce the drug costs by unite the amount that the government pays for some medication in order to lower prices abroad, said officials from the White House.

Trump will sign an executive order, including several actions, to renew these efforts, which is described as the “most preferred nation” policy.

“Foreign nations were able to free the American people for too long, and American patients who were forced to pay too much for prescription medication,” an official told reporters on Monday.

“The president is serious to reduce drug prices,” they said.

The stocks of the US drug manufacturers fell on Monday before the official announcement in the Premarket trade. Eli Lilly fell more than 5% PfizerPresent Merchant And Johnson & Johnson fell by more than 2%.

However, officials from the White House have not disclosed the medication for which the order applies. They said that the announcement on Monday will be wider than a similar policy that Trump tried during his first term that was only faced with Medicare Part B.

It is unclear how effective the guideline meets with the reduction of the costs for patients. In a social media contribution on Monday, Trump claimed that drug prices were “59%, plus!”

The order indicates the office of the US trade representative and the Ministry of Commerce, abroad, which “suppress” drug prices abroad, “inappropriate and discriminatory politics” abroad, the civil servants. It also indicates the secretary of the Ministry of Health and Human Services to promote “the most preferred nation prices”.

According to the officials, the secretary must also set clear goals for price reductions in all markets in the USA within 30 days. This will open a round of negotiations between HHS and the pharmaceutical industry, officers said without giving precise details about the type of these conversations.

If “adequate progress” is not achieved in relation to these price goals, HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will impose the most preferred prices for drugs through the rules.

The order also indicates the Food and Drug Administration to consider the expansion of imports from other industrialized nations beyond Canada. In April, Trump signed a separate executive regulation in which the Food and Drug Administration has improved the process through which states can be used to import lower cost -effective medicines from Canada, including with which the drug prices are supposed to lower.

It also heads the Commission for Ministry of Justice and the Federal Trade in aggressively enforcing “competitive measures” that keep prices in the USA

The Ministry of Commerce will also consider export restrictions that “enable refueling and this low pricing abroad”.

It is Trump's latest efforts to contain the US prescription medication prices that are on average two to three times higher than that in other industrialized countries – and up to 10 times more than in certain countries, according to the border corporation, a think tank for public policy.

The order is a blow to the pharmaceutical industry, which is already geared towards Trump's tariffs planned for prescription drugs. Drug manufacturers have argued that the “most preferred nation” policy would affect their profits and ultimately their ability to explore and develop new medication.

However, the guideline could help the patient by reducing prescription medication costs, which is a problem for many Americans. More than three out of four adults in the USA say that the costs for medication are unaffordable according to a KFF survey of 2022.

The industry also campaigned against similar Trump plans during its first term. In the past few months of this term of office, he tried to enforce the directive, but a federal judge stopped the efforts for a lawsuit from the pharmaceutical industry. The bidges then raised this policy.

Officials of the White House initially urged the Congress Republicans to determine the “most preferred nation” into the important reconciliation law that they would like to say goodbye in the coming months, but politics would have expressly deprived Medicaid drug costs at the beginning of this month. Several GOP members rejected this measure.

The largest trading group in the industry, Phrma, estimated that Trump's Medicaid proposal could cost drug manufacturers up to 1 trillion dollar over a decade.

Some of the health policy experts said that a “most preferred nation” drug policy may not be effective when lowering the medication costs.

For example, USC experts said that politics “cannot reverse the basic economy of the global drug market”, with 70% of the pharmaceutical profits come from the USA worldwide

“Before choosing between the deep cuts of their US prices or the loss of weakly profitable oversee markets, we can expect that many companies will pull out of the markets from overseas on their earliest opportunity,” said experts in a report in April.

As a result, the Americans pay the same amount for medication, pharmaceutical manufacturers with lower profits and future generations of patients with less innovation.

“Overall, everyone loses,” said the experts.

Other experts said that another legal struggle with the pharmaceutical industry could prevent politics from coming into force.

But even if the drug industry pushes back on Trump's executive order, his administration has another instrument to reduce drug prices: Medicare -ARZ -NEICHNESTREUSSARE.

This is an important provision of the Inflation Reducation Act, which gives Medicare the authority to negotiate certain prescription drug prices for the first time in history with the manufacturers.

Trump proposed a change in politics last month that drug manufacturers have been looking for for a long time. The legislator on both sides of the aisle could be receptive to the idea that propagates changing rules that distinguish between drugs with small molecules and biological drugs.

Trump said last week he was planning to announce tariffs for medication that was imported to the USA over the next two weeks. These planned taxes aim to increase the production of domestic medication.

Drug makers, including Eli Lilly And PfizerPress these potential duties back. Some companies have questioned whether the tariffs are necessary, since some of them have announced new US production as well as research and development investments since Trump took office.

Nevertheless, Trump doubled the efforts to redesign drug production last week. He signed an executive order that optimizes the path for drug manufacturers for the construction of new production locations.

Caplan found that the administration also has another instrument available, even if the drug industry pushes back the executive regulation: Medicare -drug price negotiations.