Trump Claims Credit for Drug Price Decline. Experts Say It’s More Complicated.

Filed 2h ago · Via FactCheck.org · The Buffoon Desk

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Merry Go Slower - Distressed

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Michal Bělka · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported prescription drug prices fell 3.1% over the past year, the steepest such drop since 1963, and Trump administration officials wasted no time attributing it to 'most-favored-nation' pricing deals and the new TrumpRx platform.

Health economists interviewed say the bigger drivers are likely market pressure on GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, more generics, and a Biden-era Medicare negotiation policy that already covers ten drugs. The administration's MFN deals, meanwhile, apply narrowly — to Medicaid, TrumpRx cash sales, and select drugs — not to the private insurance most Americans use.

White House spokesman Kush Desai countered that TrumpRx has 'saved real patients over $700 million' and that MFN policies will save '$500 billion' over a decade, a number FactCheck.org notes it has already debunked the assumptions behind.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Claiming credit for a price drop you can't fully explain is a time-honored Washington tradition, bipartisan in its shamelessness. The tell here is the specificity of the boast next to the vagueness of the mechanism — $500 billion projected over ten years is the kind of number that sounds precise because nobody expects to be around to check it.

Source: Read the original at FactCheck.org → Scored: Merry Go Slower - Distressed · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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