President Donald Trump has promoted his administration's new TrumpRx programme, claiming it would slash prescription drug prices for Americans by requiring pharmaceutical companies to match the lowest prices charged in other developed countries.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has promoted his administration's new TrumpRx programme, claiming it would slash prescription drug prices for Americans by requiring pharmaceutical companies to match the lowest prices charged in other developed countries.
Addressing a rally in Marietta, Georgia, Trump said his administration had implemented a "most favoured nation" pricing policy that would dramatically reduce the cost of medicines, arguing that Americans had long paid far more than consumers overseas for identical drugs.
"Under my most favoured nation... policy on drugs, we have a most favoured nation policy, meaning of all the nations in the world we have to get the most favoured price," Trump said.
"We're delivering the largest prescription drug price cuts in history by a difference of 400, 500 and 600 per cent reduction."
Trump said Americans had historically paid the highest prices in the world for medicines but that the new policy had reversed that trend.
"For decades, Americans paid the highest price for prescription drugs anywhere in the world. We were the highest price anywhere in the world, and now we're paying the lowest price anywhere in the world," he said.
"That has a huge impact on your health care costs, on -- really, on everything."
The President urged Americans to use the new online platform to compare medicine prices.
"So all you have to do now is go to TrumpRx.gov, and you're going to get drugs for prices that you never believed," he said.
"Price them out and go to your store and see if they can match it, but I don't think anybody's going to match them."
Trump argued that identical medicines are often sold in Europe at a fraction of US prices, recounting a conversation with a businessman who compared the cost of a weight-loss drug in New York and London.
"A pill that will sell for $10 in London or in Munich... is selling for $100 or $120... in New York City, or in Chicago or Los Angeles," he said.
"I said we've got to do it, it's unfair."
According to Trump, implementing the policy required negotiations not only with pharmaceutical manufacturers but also with foreign governments.
"I called up the drug companies, and they fought me," he said.
"They finally gave in... because they never thought I'd get the countries to do it."
Trump described a conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron, saying he had pressed France to increase the prices it pays for medicines so the United States would no longer shoulder a disproportionate share of pharmaceutical costs.
"I said, Emmanuel, you must raise your drug price."
Trump said Macron initially refused before agreeing after the US threatened tariffs on French wine and champagne.
"And we got France, and we got all of them the same way," Trump said.
"Now we have Favoured Nations, and we pay the lowest prices anywhere in the world from the highest prices."
The President said the initiative represented one of the most significant healthcare reforms of his administration and suggested it could become a defining issue in the upcoming midterm elections.
"That alone should win us the midterms," he said, while urging supporters to "make it too big to rig."
The Trump administration has made reducing prescription drug costs a central element of its domestic healthcare agenda, arguing that American consumers have subsidised lower medicine prices in other developed countries for decades.
Pharmaceutical pricing has remained a politically sensitive issue in the United States, where healthcare costs are among the highest in the world.