WASHINGTON– President Donald Trump will announce Friday that all 50 states will join a program aimed at offering most-favored-nation pricing for some drugs under the Medicaid program, lowering the net price of select drugs to the prices paid in other countries.
The Trump administration claims Medicaid will save billions in prescription drug costs as a result of the plan, called the “GENEROUS” Medicaid model. Experts say the savings are unclear since the content of the agreements is not public.
Friday’s announcement comes as cost-of-living issues are at the forefront of voters’ concerns ahead of the midterm elections in November. To address concerns about affordability, Trump has struck deals with pharmaceutical companies so that the cost of some drugs in the United States is not dramatically higher than in other wealthy nations.
Last year, Trump signed an executive order instituting a “Most Favored Nations” policy, under which the United States would agree to pay the same price for drugs as the nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the world.
In May, the White House estimated that Trump’s deals with pharmaceutical companies to reduce some of their prescription drug prices in the United States to levels charged in other countries could save $529 billion over the next 10 years.
Patients on Medicaid, the state- and federally-funded program for low-income people, already pay a nominal copay of a few dollars to fill their prescriptions, but lower prices could help state budgets that fund the programs.
The true cost of the claimed savings is unclear, as few details of the deals reached by the Trump administration and participating pharmaceutical companies have been made public, making independent verification of the projected savings difficult.
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Kathy Hempstead, senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, told The Associated Press that there is significant pressure on the administration to provide more granular data to justify its cost savings claims, and that the lack of information creates a barrier to legislative action.
«He’s saying Congress should codify all of its MFN agreements,» Hempstead said. «But it’s unreasonable because it’s not clear what Congress would actually do. Nobody knows what’s in these agreements.»
He added that there is concern about whether the current administration’s tenure will affect the longevity of these price cuts and whether prices will reverse once the administration leaves.
Some want more people to benefit from lower drug prices.
JD Hayworth, a former Republican congressman and spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Reform Alliance, said in a statement that Friday’s announcement reflects «significant progress, but that progress remains incomplete» as millions of Americans not enrolled in government health care want lower drug prices.
Drug prices for patients in the U.S. can depend on several factors, including the competition the treatment faces and insurance coverage. Most people have coverage through work, the individual insurance market, or government programs like Medicaid and Medicare, which protect them from much of the cost.
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