US President Donald Trump yesterday signed a wide-reaching executive order directing drugmakers to lower the prices of their medicines to align with what other countries pay that analysts and legal experts said would be difficult to implement.
The order gives drugmakers price targets in the next 30 days, and will take further action to lower prices if those companies do not make ‘significant progress’ towards those goals within six months of the order being signed.
Trump told a Press conference that the government would impose tariffs on companies if the prices in the US did not match those in other countries and said he was seeking cuts of between 59 per cent and 90pc. “Everybody should equalise. Everybody should pay the same price,” Trump said.
Investors were sceptical about the order’s implementation, and shares, which had been down overnight on the threat of ‘most favoured nation’ pricing, recovered and rose in early morning trade yesterday.
The United States pays the highest prices for prescription drugs, often nearly three times more than other developed nations. Trump tried in his first term to bring the United States in line with other countries but was blocked by the courts.
Trump said his order on drug prices was partly a result of a conversation with an unnamed friend who told the president he got a weight loss injection for $88 in London and that the same injection in the US cost $1,300.
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