On the surface, the president signed an executive order on lowering the costs of medications. Just below the surface, his plan is largely meaningless.
I've learned one of his mouth opens he's lying...
On Trump’s executive order on prescription drug prices, don’t believe the hype.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trumps-executive-order-prescription-drug-prices-dont-believe-hype-rcna206462
Years later, the incumbent president has nevertheless returned to the issue with unnerving hype, declaring that he was poised to deliver an announcement that would be “as big as it gets.” As The New York Times reported on Trump’s new executive order, there was a sizable gap between what he promised and what he delivered.
President Trump on Monday signed an executive order asking drugmakers to voluntarily reduce the prices of key medicines in the United States. But the order cites no obvious legal authority to mandate lower prices. The order said the administration would consider taking regulatory actions or importing drugs from other countries in the future if drugmakers do not comply. It was something of a win for the pharmaceutical industry, which had been bracing for a policy that would be much more damaging to its interests.
To be sure, the president did sign an executive order and used audacious rhetoric that made the Republican sound like an acolyte of independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Americans who simply looked at headlines about Trump “tackling” the high cost of prescription medications might’ve thought he’d done something meaningful that will make a different in consumers’ lives.....
The problem, of course, is that like so much of what Trump says, these boasts weren’t true. As The Washington Post’s report on the executive order note,
the new White House policy has no “clear mechanisms for providing fast relief to American patients,” was short on substantive details, and “lacks teeth that would compel lower prices in the near term.”....
Pretty much every dimension of this is difficult to take seriously. Trump’s executive order is similar to his failed first-term initiative; there’s literally no reason to believe it will be effective; it relies heavily on voluntary price drops from an industry that has no real incentive to cut its own profits; and relies on an approach to price controls that the president has repeatedly condemned.
Trump struggled to even guess the impact of his own vague policy. “Drug prices will come down by much more really if you think,” he said. “But between 59% and 80% and I guess even 90%. ... We’re getting them down 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%. But actually more than that if you think about it in a way, mathematically.”
Well, that ought to clear things up.
= new reply since forum marked as read