| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| To sue to unwind those efforts. | ||
| That's unacceptable. | ||
| There are bills that Democrats are carrying that would lower the cost of prescription drugs, actually put more money in people's pockets. | ||
| All of this is just a disingenuous effort on the House, on the part of House Republicans and Donald Trump to pretend like they are looking out for people. | ||
| If they were serious about it, the policy would be placed within their reconciliation plan. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| This is just a performance effort by the President. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's National Police Week all this week, and in the House at noon Eastern, members will start debate on three law enforcement-related bills. | |
| Lawmakers will also consider a measure aiming to educate the public on how to counter anti-Semitism. | ||
| And a vote is expected on tabling or killing Congressman Sri Tanadar's impeachment resolution against President Trump. | ||
| Off the floor, committees continue working on tax and spending legislation to further President Trump's agenda. | ||
| As always, live coverage of the House is here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| Joining us to talk about President Trump's drug pricing executive order is Daniel Payne, Washington correspondent for Stat News. | ||
| Welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| So, Daniel, let's start with the executive order. | ||
| It was signed on Monday. | ||
| What does it say? | ||
| What does it actually do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It says a lot. | |
| What it does remains to be seen. | ||
| It says that the administration is going to focus a lot of efforts across agencies, across HHS, and even across other agencies in Washington to lower drug prices. | ||
| That there's interest in maybe Medicare using its buying power to lower prices based on how much other countries pay, which is usually less than the United States, other developed nations. | ||
| And it also looks to bring pharma companies to the table with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and see if they can make a deal before some of these policy levers are enacted. | ||
| So why is it that we pay so much more for prescription drugs? | ||
| I mean, it is true. | ||
| If you were to go to Canada or you go to Europe, buy the exact same drug, it's cheaper than it is here. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's absolutely true. | |
| And I think that depending on who you ask, you would get a lot of different answers on why that's the case. | ||
| Some countries have laws that require that the price drops. | ||
| Japan, for instance, has a law that requires that the prices drop every year. | ||
| And other countries can negotiate prices as a block and say if a pharmaceutical company doesn't meet our price, our nation will just not buy. | ||
| And that's a very strong lever. | ||
| In the United States, we have a more federated system, so different people are negotiating different prices, and that maybe lowers bargaining power, some people would say. | ||
| Let's take a look at what the president said on Monday when he was talking about the impact of that executive order. | ||
| My administration will secure what we're calling most favored nations drug pricing. | ||
| The principle is simple. | ||
| Whatever the lowest price paid for a drug in other developed countries, that is the price that Americans will pay. | ||
| And we're using the term other developed countries because there are some countries that need some additional help, and that's fine. | ||
| I think that's very good. | ||
| Some prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced almost immediately by 50 to 80 to 90 percent. | ||
| Big Pharma will either abide by this principle voluntarily or will use the power of the federal government to ensure that we are paying the same price as other countries. | ||
| He mentioned Big Pharma. | ||
| What has been the reaction so far of the pharmaceutical industry? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's been mixed. | |
| Lobbyists that work for these industries in Washington have told me that they're very concerned that this could have a huge impact on their business. | ||
| Previous administrations, the last Trump administration, tried to implement a similar policy and it was just for the Medicare program. | ||
| This is much broader. | ||
| This is a more aggressive approach. | ||
| So some pharmaceutical companies are very concerned about that. | ||
| On the other hand, the markets rose. | ||
| The markets did not see this as a huge concern. | ||
| Some market analysts said. | ||
| The markets as a whole or for the pharmaceutical companies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Both, both, for pharmaceutical companies as well. | |
| Analysts said they didn't think it was likely that this policy would really, at the end of the day, be enacted in a way that really impacted the bottom line. | ||
| They just thought it was talk and would not actually happen, like the prices would not actually come down on those drugs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| Or that they thought that it wouldn't come down in a way that would impact pharmaceutical companies' bottom line. | ||
| They see legal challenges on the horizon, and certainly pharmaceutical companies are considering how they might challenge this policy. | ||
| And they see that this is just a very complex policy in general. | ||
| It's hard to take the calculations of what other developed countries pay and make sense of what we should pay. | ||
| There's a lot of complexity here. | ||
| If you have a question about President Trump's drug pricing executive order that was signed on Monday, you can give us a call. | ||
| Daniel Payne will be with us until 8 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| The numbers are Democrats 202748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| You mentioned the previous administration and Medicare. | ||
| Obviously, the government has a lot of control over Medicare. | ||
| That's a government program. | ||
| So how is that going? | ||
| Is that continuing? | ||
| I think that there were only like the top 10 most common drugs that were on the list. | ||
| What's going on with that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a great question. | |
| It's something that the administration said when they announced this policy that they weren't going to say exactly what they were going to do in Medicare to accomplish this goal. | ||
| Some very smart analysis also on staff from my colleagues says there's sort of an implicit maybe you The administration is essentially saying you should come to the table and deal with us, or else the government has all these actions that they can take to bring their drug price down, to force it down. |