President Donald Trump retains making a mathematically impossible promise.
At occasion after occasion this month and final, Trump has declared that the “most favored nation” policy he unveiled in an executive order in May goes to scale back the value of prescribed drugs by 1,000% or extra.
Trump mentioned in late August: “We have something coming up, favored nations, where I’m going to be reducing drug prices by 1,400 to 1,500%.” He mentioned Saturday: “We’re gonna be reducing drug prices down to a level that nobody – not by 20%, 30% – by like 1,000%. Because, you know, we’re paying sometimes 10 times more than other nations, and we’re not doing it anymore.” He mentioned Monday: “We have something else called ‘favored nations,’ where I’m going to be reducing drug prices by 1,000% – by 900, 600, 500, 1,200.”
Trump’s numbers make no sense. Because of how math works.
Even if Trump’s coverage does produce a giant decline in drug prices – and that’s very much uncertain provided that it depends on cooperation by reluctant pharmaceutical companies or hypothetical future regulatory motion – he can’t really cut the value of any product by 500% to 1,500%. If he magically received the businesses to scale back the prices of all of their medication to $0, that may be a 100% cut.
Cutting drug prices by greater than 100% would imply that Americans would receives a commission to purchase their medicines fairly than paying for them. Health economist Timothy McBride referred to as Trump’s claims “just not logical,” noting {that a} 500% value discount would imply {that a} drug that now prices $100 would price…damaging $400.
“I know of no drug company in the world that would give a person $400 to buy a drug that they are now pricing at $100,” McBride, a professor within the School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis, mentioned in an e mail. “There are times we subsidize prices, but even then it is exceptionally rare for the size of the subsidy to exceed the price of the item, making the net price negative.”
The “most favored nation” proposal seeks to stress pharmaceutical corporations to promote their merchandise within the US for the bottom value they promote them for in every other rich nation. In complicated comments to Fox News final week, Trump appeared to try to clarify how he’s attempting to get corporations to each decrease prices within the US and raise prices in other countries to offset the monetary hit from the US discount.
“For years,” he mentioned, “we’ve been paying sometimes for a pill $100 and they’re paying $10. And I say, what’s this all about? And now the drug companies agree that I’m right. And the countries, if they don’t agree, I’ll use tariffs to get them to agree. You understand. And we’re gonna be reducing drug costs over the next year, year and a half, by not 50 or 60% – by 1,000%. Because if you think, a $10 pill – so it will be raised up from $10 to $20, because it’s the world versus us, so the world is a bigger place – so it’ll go from $10 to $20; it won’t go for $10 to $50 or $60, for them. Which is bearable. And it’ll go from $10 to $20 for us.”
The value of a capsule going from $10 to $20 within the US could be a 100% enhance for Americans, not a 1,000% lower. If, as appears seemingly, Trump misspoke and meant that the value of a capsule would go from $100 to $20 within the US, that may be an 80% lower for Americans, once more removed from 1,000%.
After these feedback on Fox, NCS requested the White House to clarify Trump’s claims that drug prices are going to come down someplace between 1,000% to 1,500%.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai responded within the method Trump’s staff typically does when requested about one thing the president has mentioned that’s clearly inaccurate: by ignoring the particular inaccuracy and declaring that Trump is correct a few associated however completely different level.
Desai mentioned: “President Trump has correctly identified how Americans pay several times more for the same exact drugs as their peers in other wealthy nations. The Administration is committed to ensuring that drug companies make wealthy countries pay fairer rates for drugs and stop relying on Americans to subsidize the vast majority of global pharma research and development.”
We pressed the White House to particularly deal with Trump’s promised “1,000%” lower. His staff responded solely on situation of anonymity. This time, they mentioned they’d an instance: in 2023, a sure drug was listed for $521 within the US versus simply $45 in Australia, so the US value was roughly 1,000% larger.
But decreasing the US value of this drug from $521 to $45 could be a 91% lower, not a 1,000% cut. If the president wished to say that some medication price 1,000% extra within the US than in different international locations, he might merely say that; as an alternative, he has caught with the phony declare of a looming 1,000% cut.