As part of a flurry of executive actions on the first day of his second White House term, President Donald Trump on Monday rescinded an order signed by his predecessor that aimed to develop programs to lower prescription drug prices in the United States — where residents pay far more for medications than people in peer countries.
News of Trump’s rollback of Executive Order 14087 — titled Lowering Prescription Drug Costs for Americans — was buried amid dozens of other rescissions the president ordered shortly following his inauguration.
The decision to scrap Executive Order 14087 brings to a halt several pilot programs undertaken by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, including an experiment that involved offering generic medications for a $2 copay to Medicare Part D recipients.
“This act is a good indication of how Trump will approach lower drug prices,” Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group, wrote in response to Trump’s rescission of President Joe Biden’s executive order.
Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, added that “the big question, which Trump hasn’t addressed yet, is what he’ll do with government negotiation of drug prices under the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Just days before Trump took office, the Biden administration announced a fresh slate of 15 medications set to be subject to direct price negotiations between the federal government and pharmaceutical companies, many of which have sued over the negotiation program — thus far unsuccessfully.
Reuters reported last week that the powerful pharmaceutical lobby has been pushing Trump’s team to back changes to the Inflation Reduction Act that would weaken the price-negotiation provisions.
“Donald Trump is already following through on his dangerous plans to jack up the costs of drugs to appease his billionaire backers after the Biden-Haris administration took on Big Pharma and won,” Alex Floyd, rapid response director for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “Trump is again proving that he lied to the American people and doesn’t care about lowering costs—only what’s best for himself and his ultra-rich friends.”
Responding more broadly to the president’s day-one wave of unilateral actions — which included attacks on immigrants and the climate — Working Families Party national director Maurice Mitchell said Tuesday that “Trump’s flood of executive orders is just a cheap spectacle meant to distract us while his administration moves to gut our healthcare and SNAP benefits.”
“Immigrant families aren’t the reason we can’t afford eggs or prescription drugs; billionaire CEOs are,” Mitchell added.
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