By Bobby Jindal and Hannah Anderson
President Donald Trump’s negotiations with pharmaceutical companies demonstrate how his Art of the Deal approach to governance produces results for working-class Americans. President Trump is the first national leader willing to drain the swamp, taking on powerful lobbyists and special interests to deliver lower prices for patients. Democrats have simply shifted costs from patients to taxpayers, while Republicans have too often been reluctant to take on generous corporate donors. The result has been that Americans spend more on health care than other developed countries, but have shorter average life expectancies.
President Trump, on September 30, made news by announcing a deal with Pfizer—the first of many—to secure most favored nation pricing for Medicaid patients on the company’s existing drugs and for all Americans on its new drugs. This means American patients will no longer pay three to four times more than patients in other developed countries for the same drugs.
The creation of TrumpRx, a website where American patients with a prescription can go to purchase drugs directly from drug manufacturers, received far less attention Yet, direct-to-consumer (DTC) pricing models like TrumpRx could have a huge impact. For instance, Eucrisa, a drug prescribed to approximately a million American patients with eczema at almost $1,000 a tube, will be offered to Americans at an 80 percent discount—bringing the price under $200.