HHS Drug Pricing Fact Sheet

The President has promised the American people better care, more choices, and lower costs. These drug pricing actions deliver on all three fronts and key goals of the American Patients First blueprint.

– HHS Secretary Alex Azar

President Trump is delivering on his promise to cut down on foreign freeriding through the Most Favored Nation Model that will substantially lower drug prices without restricting access.

• Starting in January, our payment model will ensure Medicare pays no more than what our peers pay for some of the most expensive drugs.
• We are making no changes to the Medicare benefit, just incorporating the discounts drug companies already voluntarily give to other countries and targeting the most costly drugs.
• Overall for the 50 highest spend Medicare Part B drugs, Medicare currently pays twice what other wealthy countries pay.
• Other countries reap the benefits of American pharmaceutical investment and innovation, while American patients and taxpayers pay inflated prices.
• The model is projected to save more than $85 billion over seven years and more than $28 billion for patients in out-of-pocket costs alone.

President Trump is eliminating kickbacks to middlemen that leave patients with high costs at the pharmacy counter by delivering those discounts straight to patients.

• Our system current system of kickbacks drives drug prices higher and higher every year, and the discounts negotiated for you often aren’t reflected in the price you pay at the pharmacy counter.
• It even discourages use of low-cost generics and biosimilars, because the middlemen get bigger rebates on more expensive drugs.
• In 2019, there were nearly $40 billion in rebates passed around Part D; the new rule ensures that all discounts in Part D would have to be reflected in patients’ costs at the pharmacy counter.
• These discounts are currently an approximate average of nearly 30 percent for brand drugs, and even deeper for certain drugs, like insulin.
• For patients with high drug costs, annual savings could be hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

President Trump has done more than any President in history to take on the high cost of prescription drugs and protect American patients.

• Announced the end of a program that drug companies had used to jack up prices on older drugs.
• Since release of the President’s drug pricing blueprint in May 2018, drug price inflation has been flat, after steadily rising in previous years.
• $3.4 billion in Medicare premium savings under President Trump, 2021 MA premiums down 34 percent and lowest in 14 years, 1,600 Part D plans to offer insulin at $35 a month.
• Opening the first pathway for states to use to safely import prescription drugs to lower patients’ drug costs and solicited proposals for personal importation of drugs and reimportation of insulin.
• Delivered historic levels of generic drug approvals three years in a row: 1,171 in FY19 alone.
  • Approvals of these safe, effective medications saved Americans an estimated $26 billion in just first 18 months of Trump Administration.
• Signed an Executive Order that it has been and will continue to be the policy of the United States to give Americans seeking healthcare more choice, lower costs, and better care and ensure that Americans with pre-existing conditions can obtain insurance of their choice at affordable rates.
• Implemented legislation signed by President Trump that banned pharmacy gag clauses, ensuring pharmacists could now always help patients find the cheapest option for the medications.