The US president, Donald Trump, signed on Tuesday, April 14, an executive order that seeks to reduce medicines prices, accelerate the approval of generic products and improve the efficiency of the Medicare health program, with a concession to pharmacists.
Trump ordered the Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to collaborate with Congress to modify the Medication Price Negotiation Program under the Medicare Public Plan.
This program, approved in 2022 within the Law on Inflation Reduction, allows the Government to deal with pharmacists to offer products at low cost to Medicare beneficiaries and contains what pharmacists criticize as the “penalty of the pill”, which limits the price of some drugs for years after approval.
The “penalty,” says Trump, “threatens to distort innovation, carrying the investment to expensive biological products – often indicated to treat more rare diseases – and moving it away from medications ‘of small molecule’ with recipe, generally cheaper and treating greater populations of patients.”
He also ordered Kennedy Jr. working on a payment model that allows Medicare to “obtain a better value for money in biological drugs and high-cost recipe” covered by that plan.
Among other provisions, the President proposes to “reassess the role of the intermediary” in the pharmaceutical value chain, “accelerate the approval of the generic” and identify recipe medications that can be “reclassified” for free sale in pharmacies.
Although the text is vague, it specifically mentions insulin and epinephrine as examples of drugs that seek to make more accessible and affordable for people with low income or without medical insurance.
The order, which also intends to “increase import at low prices” of drugs with recipe, arrives precisely when Trump is expected to soon announce tariffs on imports from the pharmaceutical sector, so far exempt from taxes in his commercial war. Kennedy Jr. is also ordered to collaborate with the Justice and Commerce departments, as well as with the Federal Trade Commission, to “reduce the anti -competitive behavior of pharmaceutical manufacturers”.