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Although Mr. Trump described the policy as transformational, it can have very limited impact for most Medicare beneficiaries. The policy applies only to a class of drugs that patients obtain from doctors in an office or hospital, and not to drugs that they themselves purchase at the pharmacy counter. While some seniors end up paying for a share of these drugs, the vast majority have special insurance to protect them from the cost. This means that the savings will likely benefit the government more than individual patients. This will have no effect on the prices paid by people who obtain insurance through work or who buy their own health insurance.
But the plan, as drafted, would also change the way medical providers are paid for the administration of these drugs, reducing their payment as well. An effort by health officials in the Obama administration to reduce these payments met with major opposition from the medical industry and was ultimately scuttled.
“America’s hospitals and healthcare systems are very concerned about the substance and legality of the current interim final rule of the most-favored-nation model,” said Tom Nickels, executive vice president of the American Hospital Association, in A declaration.
Mr. Trump announced two other major health policies. Discounts paid by pharmaceutical companies to intermediate buyers would be eliminated, a priority for Alex M. Azar II, secretary of the Ministry of Health and Social Services. Another would relax some anti-bribe rules on business relationships between doctors and other businesses, with the aim of improving cooperation between different actors in the management of patient health.
For years Mr Azar sought to supplement the rebate rule, but encountered opposition from the White House, including Joe Grogan, the former head of the Home Policy Council, who worked from aggressively to kill the policy. Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, worked with Mr Azar this year to revive him as part of a package of drug pricing initiatives, senior administration officials said.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for PhRMA, the main drugmaker trade group, did not say whether the industry would sue the price rule. “It flies in the face of logic that the administration blindly pursues a ‘most favored nation’ policy that gives foreign governments the upper hand in deciding the value of drugs in the United States,” said Nicole Longo , director of public affairs for the group, who called the policy “illegal.”
The statement was more supportive of the discount rule, which drugmakers tend to support.
Mr. Trump’s press conference was littered with grievances against the pharmaceutical industry. He complained that he was the victim of “millions and millions of dollars of advertising” targeting his drug pricing initiatives. He said Americans “have been deceived by the big drug companies and their army of lawyers, lobbyists and bought and paid politicians.” White House officials are still unhappy with the collapse of a deal with the pharmaceutical industry this summer to offer cuts to Medicare beneficiaries.
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