What is in there and will it work?

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that aims to reduce high prescription medication prices to reduce their details and long-term effects.

Quotation that patients in other countries pay much less than Americans for pharmaceuticals, Trump said that he would order pharmaceutical companies to reduce their prices in the United States.

He observed the move as “one of the consequences of the follow -up disorders” in the history of the US story and claimed that prices would “almost immediately drop by 30% to 80%”.

However, experts are very skeptical about the requirements, and the stock market movements show that investors believe that they will have little immediate effects.

The United States has a particularly complex health system – including a large private insurance industry, employer longs and publicly financed insurance programs for older and arms, known as Medicare or Medicaid.

In many other industrialized countries, more centralized systems mean that civil servants can negotiate drug prices and in some cases refuse to buy if they consider the price too high.

In 2021, the US government's auditing office carried out a comparison with Australia, Canada and France and found that the prescription medication in the United States was two to four times more expensive.

Politicians from both political parties in the United States have held the costs. During the announcement of the White House on Monday, the Health Minister Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noticed that prices were an employment of Democrats and a main goal of the socialist senator Bernie Sanders' presidential campaigns.

Both Trump tried to tackle the problem in his first term and the former President Joe Biden, in particular the costs for life-saving drugs such as insulin, but US prices persist.

On Monday in the White House, Trump and his health officers made the lack of progress in the efforts of the pharmaceutical lobbying and great donations to the members of the congress.

“The drug lobby is the strongest lobby,” Trump told reporters. “From today, the United States will no longer subsidize health care abroad, which we have done.”

It should also be noted that Trump's trade tariffs that he used consistently to threaten other countries – could increase the costs even further. Trump previously said that he would control drugs imported in the USA.

Trump's command is much wider than earlier efforts to reduce costs – however, many details still have to be worked out.

The wording indicates the US officials to ensure that businesses lead to “inappropriate or discriminatory” price increases for Americans.

But what exactly is treated by these terms is unclear – just like the question of which measures the white house would require if “inappropriate” practices are discovered.

The White House also wants pharmaceutical companies to sell more products directly to consumers – insurance companies and pharmaceutical performance managers – and see how they import drugs from abroad where they are sold at lower prices. This idea previously met stumbling blocks for security and trade rules.

An official said that the order was the beginning of the negotiations between the US Ministry of Health and HHS (HHS) and industry on Monday.

The order also suggested that the United States received the status of the most preferred nation (MfN) – ie pharmaceutical companies would be asked to reach the lowest price for a medication abroad when selling to US consumers.

“Big Pharma will either keep this principle voluntarily, or we will use the power of the federal government to ensure that we pay the same price as other countries,” Trump told reporters.

It was unclear what mechanism the white house would be used to punish pharmaceutical companies that refuse to keep to comply with voluntarily.

According to Alan Sager, professor of health policy at Boston University, drug prices are very opaque. Drug manufacturers were able to easily argue that they comply with the order by announcing the price discounts that they have already offered routinely at very high retail prices, he told the BBC.

“Will you act? Maybe. Will you say that you act? Certainly,” said Prof. Sager.

“It is very unclear whether this signals a permanent and meaningful cut with extraordinarily high US drug prices,” he said. “This is rhetoric, not reality.”

Trump's preview of the announcement met the share prices of large drug manufacturers such as Pfizer, Eli Lilly and GSK Great Britain.

However, you have staged a quick recovery that gathered after the administration shared the scope of your plans – an indication that investors do not expect the steps to have a major influence.

According to researchers Darius Lakdawalla and Dana Goldman at the University of Southern California, drug companies could simply withdraw from other nations from other nations in which they sell their products cheaper from other nations.

The researchers also said that foreign governments routinely underestimated the true value of pharmaceuticals and that “relocating to a European pricing in the United States would lead to a shorter, less healthy life for Americans”.

In the meantime it is unclear how lower prescription medication prices would fit in Kennedy's “Make America Healthy” agenda. The health secretary consistently emphasized the nutrition and movement as the key to improving the health of the Americans and criticized the spread of many pharmaceutical products, including vaccines and drugs for the treatment of mental illnesses.

Any potential reduction in drug prices is likely to be popular with Americans – since surveys always show that high costs are an important problem with regard to the US health system.

C Michael White, a pharmacy professor at the University of Connecticut, said that the results of the Trump government's actions on the pharmaceutical prices “will be minimal for many Americans”, but that all attempts at greater transparency and lower costs “are a positive step in the right direction”.

However, it is expected that the order from the pharmaceutical industry in court and congress is faced with challenges.

Industry groups are largely against the executive order and say that it will be counterproductive – potentially the range of pharmaceuticals and funds for research opportunities and little to suppress high costs.

Stephen J UBL, President of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturer of America, said in a statement that “foreign prices from socialist countries would be a bad business” for American patients.

John F Crowley, President of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, described the MFN status “as deeply incorrect proposal that would destroy the small and medium-sized biotech companies in our country by possibly copying funding for research funds.

“Patients and families are not a negotiation chip in a trade war, but this is exactly how they are treated – first by proposed tariffs in the medication of our nation, now with foreign reference prices on behalf of the fairness.”

But Alan Sager, the professor of Boston University, was skeptical about the arguments of the industry. He pointed out that the money used to research a medication was issued before winning, and suggested that there may be other ways to finance research – like large cash prices for remedies for certain diseases.

Prof. Sager suggested that real measures to increase drug prices would depend on the president's attention span.

“In view of the president's obvious public, it is not clear that he will stay with this problem or that he will be ready and able to act effectively,” he said.

With the reporting of Natalie Sherman in New York