Trump and Biden are chalk and cheese on many issues of public interest but the top priority for Trump when he took office was national health.
On his COVID-19 election, Biden warned of a “dark winter ahead.” Biden endorses mandatory face masks but is torn about lockdown simply because his COVID advisors are divided. Some want a complete national lockdown for 4-6 weeks and some do not. A strong leader would pin his advisors down for a clear answer, but Biden is not that leader.
VP Mike Pence says a complete lockdown is not necessary to curb the recent surge in infections, clearly pinning the nation’s hopes on the COVID vaccine awaiting FDA approval.
Trump’s first step when he took office was to to reduce medical costs for all Americans and it is fitting that his first appearance following the election was to announce the measures around prescription drug pricing.
The following information and quotes were taken directly from Trump’s presentation.
Insulin costs for seniors are capped at $35 a month, saving them on average $500-$1,000 a year and the cost of Epipens is reduced saving insulin users a further $1,000 a year on insulin.
Medicare part two premiums reduced by 12% putting nearly $2B back into senior’s pockets but Trump says that 12% saving is peanuts compared to what he has done with his “most favoured nations” policy which he says has been talked about for many years but no one had the courage to do it because of the power of Big Pharma.
The “most favoured nation rule” is that Medicare must look at what other nations pay and the US will match the lowest price paid by other countries.
Lower prices of prescription drugs will save seniors millions of dollars when the middlemen are taken out and negotiated prescription discounts passed directly on the patients instead of the middlemen.
Trump says ending global freeloading, where Americans pay twice as much and sometimes four or five times more for drugs than patients in other countries, is ending.
Big Pharma use the ‘unapproved drug initiative” to obtain market exclusivity and jack up prices enormously between 1,000% and 5,000%. Trump is ending this practice to “save Americans from being abused by Big Pharma.”
Trump said Big Pharma ran “millions of dollars of negative advertising against me during the [election] campaign” adding “which I won!”
“We had Big Pharma against us, we had the media against us, we had Big Tech against us, we had a lot of dishonesty against us, but Big Pharma alone ran millions and millions of of dollars in ads…”
Pfizer was way ahead in the COVID vaccine race, thanks to Trump incentivising the work through Operation Warp Speed, but deliberately held back announcing the completion of a successful COVID vaccine until after the election. Trump had promised America the vaccine before the end of October – a deadline Pfizer met but didn’t announce until after the election. The vaccine is reputedly 95% effective and will be released following FDA approval.
Trump put an end to gag clauses that prevented pharmacists from telling patients about less expensive drugs. Trump says pharmacists can and should tell patients about less expensive drugs.
A record number of affordable generic drugs have been approved by Trump’s regime for three years in a row with a very heavy emphasis put on generic drugs. Trump advised the pricing has been good but the master of the deal expects it will yet go down substantially.
Trump claims “no administration has ever fought harder or achieved more for our patients and for our seniors, and also for America where other countries were paying only a fraction of what we were paying” adding that the process was hard and took two years.
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