Trump signs new executive order aimed at lowering drug prices

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TheHill:
Still, the order does not look to lower drug prices for people who are not on Medicare.

The pharmaceutical industry quickly blasted the surprise move and raised the idea of suing to stop it.

“With scientists and researchers at America’s biopharmaceutical companies working around the clock to fight a deadly pandemic, it is simply dumbfounding that the Trump administration would move forward with its threat to import foreign price controls and the inevitable delays to innovation that will follow,” said Michelle McMurry-Heath, CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.

She said the industry will “use every tool available – including legal action if necessary – to fight this risky foreign price control scheme.”

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who has long pushed for strong action to lower drug prices, dismissed the move as a pre-election stunt by Trump, with few details, “after failing to lower any prices during almost four years.”

“Trump aims to make a misleading headline for his failing campaign, not a genuine difference for victims of price gouging,” Doggett said in a statement.
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Is it Trump’s fault there is little to no consumer price protection in the ACA that was signed by Obama? Is it Big Pharma’s fault they made sure of that way back when?

This is far short of what really needs to be done, yet Big Pharma is acting like its ox has been gored badly. But anything is better than nothing, have to start somewhere when attempting to make inroads against the most powerful lobby in DC. But why did Obama leave this to his successors, that’s what I really want to know.
 
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Zzyzx_Road said:
But why did Obama leave this to his successors, that’s what I really want to know.
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Maybe we will find out when we see whether or not this executive order actually lowers drug prices. Then and only then can Trump supporters crow about how Trump did something that Obama couldn’t.
 
I hope it works out in the end. I know my parents take a few drugs and have marveled at how much cheaper the very same drug is sold in Canada compared to pricing in the US. The drug companies will be fighting the move by President Trump. It will undoubtably face court battles.
 
Zzyzx_Road said:
But why did Obama leave this to his successors, that’s what I really want to know.
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Because Obama, like Trump and Republicans and Democrats, serves capital. If Trump and the Republicans were going to do anything about drug prices they’d have done it when they controlled the legislature.
 
Theo520 said:
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LeafByNiggle:
The rest of the article:
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Yes far more can be done, but this is directionally good and targeted at those most needy.
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Directions to point and targets to aim at don’t actually mean anything unless the arrow moves somewhere.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Maybe we will find out when we see whether or not this executive order actually lowers drug prices. Then and only then can Trump supporters crow about how Trump did something that Obama couldn’t.
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Well it’s a fact that Obama didn’t reduce drug prices.

Why do you think that important cost component was overlooked within ACA?
 
How on Earth does “linking [drug costs] to the cost of the same drugs in other nations” avoid the SOCIALISM tag?

Isn’t price control enforced by the government a key element of socialist states?
 
Theo520 said:
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LeafByNiggle:
Maybe we will find out when we see whether or not this executive order actually lowers drug prices. Then and only then can Trump supporters crow about how Trump did something that Obama couldn’t.
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Well it’s a fact that Obama didn’t reduce drug prices.

Why do you think that important cost component was overlooked within ACA?
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I doubt it was for lack of trying.
 
Theo520 said:
Why do you think that important cost component was overlooked within ACA?
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Because the Democrats, like Republicans, serve capital. Single payer as always is the only way out of the bipartisan horror of our health care system.
 
billsherman said:
How on Earth does “linking [drug costs] to the cost of the same drugs in other nations” avoid the SOCIALISM tag?
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It’s very free market when the biggest volume buyer get’s best pricing.

That US buyers were paying above market price is what’s been very much contrary to Capitalism.
 
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LeafByNiggle said:
Directions to point and targets to aim at don’t actually mean anything unless the arrow moves somewhere.
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ROFL, you’ll never be able to admit Trump does anything useful.

What about those Mid East peace accords, and that one in Afghanistan?
 
Theo520 said:
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LeafByNiggle:
Directions to point and targets to aim at don’t actually mean anything unless the arrow moves somewhere.
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ROFL, you’ll never be able to admit Trump does anything useful.

What about those Mid East peace accords, and that one in Afghanistan?
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Yup. They were useful. I have always said that Trump is not a military hawk, which is a good thing.
 
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billsherman said:
A shockingly similar plan proposed by Nancy Pelosi was called “Socialist” by McConnell last year.

“Socialist price controls will do a lot of left-wing damage to the healthcare system. And of course we’re not going to be calling up a bill like that.”
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Quite a few members of the GOP are in the pocket of big pharma, and use their talking points.

Calling contracted ‘best pricing’ as price control is dishonest, this clause is included in many purchasing contracts, it’s capitalism.
 
Balto1 said:
Single payer as always is the only way out of the bipartisan horror of our health care system.
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I don’t know that the outcomes are going to be any different given the influence on Congress that Big Pharma and other large health care entities have. Just as they shut the consumer out of the deliberations over the ACA, they again will shut the consumer out of the single payer deliberations. It is not for nothing that Big Pharma spends the most lobbying dollars in DC. But some insist on believing Big Pharma aren’t about the money. Nothing illegal about what they do, to be sure, it was signed into law by Obama, but the fact that what they do is legal should anger many more of us than it does.
 
I heard Trump talk about Drug Prices a while back. He stated that the problem was something like a middle man. The same speech, he spoke of powerful people wanting to do something to him. I cannot remember much. He also spoke of how we are taken advantage of, by selling the same medication at fifty cents to Mexico and two thousand to the USA.

A little while latter and we have this. This is good thing. Those who complain that we never do something, also complain that what we do is not enough. Things take time.
 
Theo520 said:
Calling contracted ‘best pricing’ as price control is dishonest, this clause is included in many purchasing contracts, it’s capitalism.
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I more or less agree with you. I think this plan is broadly a good idea, I’m mostly curious about how people (like McConnell) who have condemned similar plans in the past as “socialist” will justify this one.

As you know, most of the things condemned as “socialist” are nothing approaching socialist. Price controls, of course, aren’t socialist.
 
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