President Trump Promised to Lower Drug Prices: the Clock Has Run Out.
By Margarida Jorge, Campaign Director for Lower Drug Prices Now
No matter where you live, what you look like, or how much money you make, chances are you’re going to get sick at some point in your life and need affordable medicine to feel better. That reality has never been more clear than now as President Trump, and a growing number of lawmakers and Administration insiders have joined the ranks of COVID infected patients. Whether it’s COVID, chronic migraines, crippling arthritis, or high blood pressure, prescription medicines are often essential to recovery, preventing future illness, and managing long-term health conditions.
The United States is the richest country on the planet, but for millions of people the nation’s wealth hasn’t translated into guaranteed access to the affordable medicines they need. Contrary to President Trump’s recent claims, drug prices have not fallen 50% or more, nor is insulin cheap as water.
Instead, we know that 1-in-3 Americans are skipping a prescription refill because of the cost. 1-in-10 say they have rationed medicines, and that number increases to 1-in-4 when you’re talking about insulin. Sadly, rationing lifesaving medicines like insulin has led to a number of people losing their lives.
Americans pay more than anyone else in the world for our prescription drugs — roughly twice as much as patients in other countries. Already in 2020, 2,519 drugs have increased prices. The average hike so far this year is 6.9%. Meanwhile prescription drug corporations continue to hold the top spot as the most profitable industry in the nation and, thanks to President Trump’s corporate tax breaks under the TJCA (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act), drug corporations get to keep more of those profits than ever.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Nearly a third of Americans say lowering drug prices is a top issue for them in the upcoming election and there’s strong consensus on remedies to this epidemic of skyrocketing prices. Polling shows that a strong majority of Democrats, Republicans and Independents support negotiating drug prices and nearly two thirds of Americans support limiting the drug corporations’ power to set prices for new drugs.
President Trump is well aware that these reforms are popular. As a candidate, Trump promised Americans he would fix drug prices, pledging to make the drug companies “negotiate like crazy” and promising Americans that “You’ll be seeing drug prices falling very substantially in the not-too-distant future, and it’s going to be beautiful.”
Nearly four years later, the clock has run out on those promises. President Trump has little to show for his time in office except drug prices that are rising faster than the cost of any other good or service, and his tenacity in repealing the ACA, a law that made prescription drug coverage an essential health benefit required under insurance plans, and provided discounts to seniors in Part D.
The result of his inaction is that access to prescription drugs continues to be treated more like a luxury than a public good in the United States, even though like education, healthcare and roads, taxpayers pick up most of the cost. In fact, taxpayer funding contributed to the development of every FDA-approved drug over the past decade. In just the first six months of COVID, lawmakers have already deployed $16 billion in taxpayer funding to develop new COVID medicines and vaccines.
While medical innovations that could stop the pandemic in its tracks are a worthy investment of public money, we know that new drugs can’t help people if they can’t afford them. So far, the Trump Administration has refused to guarantee affordability, opting instead to turn over money to Big Pharma with no strings attached and letting drug corporations set prices.
Anyone who’s been to the pharmacy lately can tell you that giving drug corporations monopoly control over prices hasn’t worked for insulin, EpiPens, cancer or thousands of other drugs. It’s not going to work for COVID medicines either. Gilead, for instance, has already set the price of Remdisivir, the first drug approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) for treatment of COVID-19 symptoms, at the outrageous amount of $3,120 for a 5-day treatment course.
Until elected leaders pass comprehensive legislation that reins in the corporations’ monopoly power to set prices on drugs and raise them at will, requires negotiations in Medicare to increase affordability, and increases accountability and transparency for taxpayer funding for research and innovation, Americans will not get the equitable access to affordable medicines they deserve.
The time for reform is beyond overdue and the public’s patience for meaningful action is wearing thin across both parties. Seniors like Reverend Melvin Whitley, a disabled Vietnam veteran living in Durham, North Carolina, need specific medicines to stay alive, “I have two medicines that if I don’t take each day, twice a day, I would be in the hospital. I’ve had heart surgery, so these medicines are important to me.” He is one of roughly 1-in-5 Americans who receive their medicines by mail put at risk when President Trump interfered with Postal Service policies as part of a partisan political ploy.
The President has procrastinated until the last minute, signing symbolic Executive Orders in a scrambled effort to disguise his broken promises. Rather than working with Democrats in Congress to pass H.R.3 and the MMAPPP Act — bills to lower drug prices and ensure that any COVID vaccine developed with taxpayers dollars is affordable and accessible to all, he’s still trying to repeal the ACA so he can give drug corporations an additional $2.8 billion in tax breaks annually while millions more go without health care.
The drug companies have gamed the system for too long and Americans are tired of empty rhetoric from politicians who prefer to keep going through the motions. There’s no better time for Congress to take action than now, during a public health crisis threatening our health, economy and national security, to re-write the rules of a system that keeps profits high at the expense of our health care.
