Trump urges pharmacists to lower medication prices and upload them abroad to compensate for losses | International

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has undertaken on Thursday an open war against the pharmaceutical industry, by sending letters to those responsible for 17 large companies, in which he suggests the measures they must adopt to reduce the price of medications that are prescribed in the US until the lowest price that is sold in other developed countries. The Republican gives companies a period of 60 days to guarantee the best possible prices or, otherwise, to face “all the tools” that the administration is willing to deploy to benefit US patients.

The measures that Trump suggests to the sector are to put prices similar to those of other countries developed in prescription medications to patients from Medicaid (medical insurance for low income); demand that manufacturers that will not offer other developed nations better prices for new medications than those offered in the US; Eliminate intermediaries and sell medications directly to patients, provided they do so at a price not exceeding the best price available in countries around. Trump also prevents them from “the free use of American innovation by European countries and other developed countries.”

The offensive against pharmacists, which appeared as one of the priorities of the agenda of the Secretary of Health, the controversial Robert Kennedy, contemplates, as a counterpart, to use the US commercial policy – emotioning for their tariff war Americans. That is, a kind of tariff or undercover tax, and conditioned on revenue reinvestment.

Trump has sent the same letter to the CEO on Thursday of the main pharmaceuticals, without being left in the inkwell: they have been questioned – as it has been renovating in its social network Truth – Merck, Astrazeneca, GSK, Pfizer, Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Sanofi, Novartis, Boehringer and Johnson & Johnson, among others. According to the letters, “from now on” Trump will only accept from pharmaceuticals a clear commitment that provides American families “an immediate relief of enormously inflated prices.” If companies reject the president’s orders, the letter warns, “the administration will display any possible tool to prevent abusive practices” in fixing pharmaceutical prices.

In the letter sent to the 17 pharmacists, Trump also reminds of those responsible that on May 12 he signed an executive order that asked these companies to reduce the prices of medicines in the US in a period of 30 days, with a reduction of up to 80%. According to the content of the letter, which was read by Karoline Leavitt, secretary of the White House press, in their daily appearance, “Currently, brand medications in the United States are, on average, up to three times more expensive than any other place. This unacceptable burden on working -worked American families ends with my administration,” he emphasizes.

“Americans demand lower prices in medicines and need them today. Other nations have taken advantage of our innovation for too long and it is time for them to pay what corresponds to them,” concludes the letter.

At the moment there has been no reaction from the powerful sector to this exercise of interventionism, unpublished in a government so in favor of deregulation at all levels, from the environmental requirements to financial protection or guarantees and safeguards for the consumer.