President Donald Trump's latest bid to cut the price of prescription drugs has once again sparked a heated debate over the high costs paid by American patients.

The White House leader signed an executive order on Monday to compare the prices of certain U.S. drugs with lower foreign drugs to lower drug costs.

Trump said the move has called his first term the "most popular nation" policy, resuming and expanding the controversial policy aimed at reducing "fairness for the United States" and lower prices by 59% or more.

The United States always pays the most for many prescription drugs.

A 2024 report by Rand Corporation found that the U.S. drug prices are three times higher than those in 33 other high-income countries on average.

This is largely due to the highly complex and decentralized reimbursement system in the United States and the lack of national pricing controls.

Drug prices in the United States are usually set by pharmaceutical companies and negotiated by private insurance companies. This is in stark contrast to many other countries, such as in Europe, where governments negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies to limit the costs paid by their state-funded health systems.

Private insurers in the United States often rely on intermediaries called pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs) to negotiate costs because they tend to be larger and have greater pricing power. However, they usually do this with limited transparency and can get a fee on higher-priced drugs.

Meanwhile, drug manufacturers argue from their perspective that they defend higher U.S. costs because they help fund critical research and development – ​​Trump has long criticized the unfair burden on U.S. consumers.

"Americans pay more for drugs. That's right. That's right." Emily Field, head of research at Barclays Europe, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Tuesday.

"Trump doesn't like (they) encounter bad deals," she added.

However, Field notes that while American consumers typically pay more for branded drugs, the situation is far from obvious.

“While the brand market for U.S. medicines is very expensive and has little price transparency, when you take a step back, there is a very, very efficient and good at reducing costs in the U.S. system,” she said.

Unbranded generics make up 90% of the amount of prescriptions in the United States, while other senior countries average 41%. These drugs are also often cheaper for U.S. patients, about two-thirds of the cost paid by other countries.

The Trump administration will provide targets for drug manufacturers’ price targets over the next 30 days, and further action will be taken if companies do not make “significant progress” to those targets.

These programs are seen as affecting popular drug companies, such as weight loss drug manufacturers Novo Nordisk and Yililai.

However, as the measures consider these measures to be less serious than expected and are likely to face legal challenges, pharmaceutical stocks suffered a rebound earlier this week from earlier this week. Trump took a similar move during his firm term, which was eventually stopped by the court.

"We expect the implementation of the MFN (the most popular country) to require legislation, and Trump cited the official method bill's recommendations and we think there are more ways to oppose the industry," UBS analyst Trung Huynh wrote in a note on Monday.

“Price will be a droop of our industry, but we think President Trump’s tone is relatively positive for the industry.”

Still, Field notes that the command measures designed to limit the role of private sector PBMs may eventually reduce U.S. costs in some way.

"We will cut the middleman and sell drugs directly at the price of our favorite country," President Trump wrote in a truth-clarifying social post on Monday.

In recent years, they have worked hard as they face regulatory pressure from the Federal Trade Commission. Despite bipartisan support, so far lawmakers are still working to pass any changes in Congress.

Under the executive order, government health departments will create a mechanism for patients to buy more drugs directly from manufacturers.

"It seems that there is an increasing effort to make these PBMs bad guys," Field said.

“I think you might see an increase in conversations, questioning that PBMs will increase the value of the system and that they will actually increase costs, not save costs for users, as they claim to save for users.”