LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Trump administration is once again taking aim at the high prices Americans pay for prescription drugs. The president signed an executive order Monday that he says would get prices in line with what other high-income countries pay, but there's a tension within that order. NPR pharmaceuticals correspondent Sydney Lupkin reports.
SYDNEY LUPKIN, BYLINE: Americans generally pay more for name-brand prescription medications than people in other countries. And whether they vote red or blue, they don't like it. The Trump administration wants to lower U.S. drug prices by tying them to those paid elsewhere. It's called most favored nation pricing. Here's President Trump talking about it in the White House.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Whoever is paying the lowest price, we will look at that price, and we will say, that's the price we're going to pay.
LUPKIN: But he also wants other countries to pay more for their drugs so that Americans aren't subsidizing drug development for the rest of the world. Other countries mostly pay less than the U.S. because they have government health systems that set drug prices. By and large, the United States doesn't set prices, so the drug companies can see what the market here will bear. Juliette Cubanski, a Medicare drug pricing expert at the nonpartisan research group KFF, says it's not yet clear how the Trump administration will implement the executive order.
JULIETTE CUBANSKI: We certainly don't have answers to any of the important questions that we need to have answers to in order to understand the real impact of the actions that are proposed in this executive order.
LUPKIN: The order directs the U.S. Trade Representative and Department of Commerce to take action against, quote, "unreasonable and discriminatory policies" that lower drug prices outside the U.S. It also directs the administration to set most favored nation price targets and share them with the drugmakers within 30 days. And it also directs the Department of Health and Human Services to facilitate direct-to-consumer drug sales, bypassing health insurance at most favored nation prices. Here's Juliette Cubanski again.
CUBANSKI: This is an idea that's probably going to sound good to a lot of people, but exactly how it gets implemented will really matter.
LUPKIN: The drug industry trade group PhRMA said Americans shouldn't have to foot the bill for global innovation. And to lower costs, America is right to push other countries to pay their fair share through trade negotiations.
Sydney Lupkin, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.