U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that he said would reduce the price of prescription drugs in the United States by as much as 90%.
In a Monday announcement, Trump said that pharmaceutical companies that have been "profitable" will have to lower prices, but mainly blame high prices for foreign prices.
"We will be in balance," Trump said in a press conference. "We will all pay the same amount. We will pay what Europe pays."
People in the United States have long been an outlier when it comes to the price paid for a variety of life-saving drugs, usually several times more than other wealthy people pay to buy nearly the same drug in other wealthy countries.
This phenomenon is often attributed to the substantial economic and political impact of the pharmaceutical industry in the United States.
The high cost of medical drugs has been a dissatisfaction in the U.S. for years, and Trump accused the pharmaceutical industry of “get rid of murder” in 2017.
But in Monday's speech, U.S. leaders also seemed to say that U.S. pharmaceutical companies should not ultimately blame the price difference. Instead, Trump constitutes these high prices with familiarity with his trade imbalances with partners such as the EU and said the United States is "subsidizing" other countries with lower drug prices.
This view seems to be consistent with the framework of the pharmaceutical industry itself. The industry's most powerful lobbying sector says the reason for the high prices of American consumers is "foreigns don't pay their fair share."
Senator Bernie Sanders, a left-wing politician, has opposed the high prices American patients have paid for over the years.
"I agree with President Trump: It's anger that the American people have paid for the highest price of prescription drugs so far," Sanders said in a statement.
"But be clear: the problem is that the price of prescription drugs in Europe and Canada is too low. The problem is that the greedy pharmaceutical industry made more than $10 billion in profits last year by depriving the American people of the United States."
A fact sheet shared by the White House said the administration will “communicate price targets to drug manufacturers to determine that the largest buyers in the United States and funders of prescription drugs are the best deals in the world.”
After the announcement, the stock price of US drugmakers was ticked upward. Experts doubt Trump's optimistic claim that drug prices will drop rapidly and significantly.
"It does seem like manufacturers are asking them to voluntarily lower their prices to a certain extent," Rachel Sachs, a health law expert at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, told the Associated Press News.
“If they don’t lower the price to the point they need, HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) should take other timetables to take other actions, some of which may lower drug prices in future years.”