How did President Trump get Big Pharma to “equalize” their prices with the EU’s?

Statement One:

“I will be instituting a MOST FAVORED NATION’S POLICY whereby the United States will pay the same price as the Nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the World,” the Republican president posted on social media on Sunday, pledging to sign the order on Monday morning at the White House.

Statement Two:

“Importing foreign prices will cut billions of dollars from Medicare with no guarantee that it helps patients or improves their access to medicines,” Stephen J. Ubl, the president and CEO of PhRMA, said in a statement. “It jeopardizes the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America, making us more reliant on China for innovative medicines.”

“Why am I paying 8$ London for an identical pill that costs me $1300 in the U.S,” a wealthy friend of the President asks him. Response: the President will end that and so Americans will pay the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs.

Statement Two points out the lowering drug costs doesn’t help patients. It’s a low cost drug and not a high cost one that will deter access. Also, if Big Pharma’s profit margin shrinks, as it will if they have to sell a $1300 drug for $8, investors will diminish.

This response is, of course, idiotic but allowances must be made as President Trump’s announcement that he will set market prices for their products is a shock to the smooth running predation of Big Pharma. To allay the shock in the typical style of the President, he blames the EU for unequal drug prices and not the companies. This is a sop that won’t wash. The matter will work its way to the Supreme Court, a well-worn path.

Is this Federal Government intrusion in market forces/play and the sanctity of private enterprise going to rouse up the investment class portion of the President’s support? Will Republicans in Congress speak out in defense of this Putin/Xi like violation of the free play of capitalism?

Certainly the wage earner and not dividend class of MAGA will celebrate Trump’s victory over Big Pharma. It will not be an easy matter for Republicans to go against Trump on this. The exorbitant prices of drugs in the U.S. compared to other countries is a matter that should have found a bi-partisan answer long ago. But the power of a Big Pharma lobby as well as the fright of socialized medicine stymied action. Now the President has stepped in as little concerned with stomping on Market Rule as Constitutional Rule.

You’ve got to admit this President swings wide and wild. But protectively. Of himself. If Democrats take the House in 2026, he’ll swing for what he’s done in just 100 days. Impeachment for sure. Conviction only if the Dems get control of the Senate also. The survivalist in this man is shoring up a part of his base, that part I think that gave him winning votes, by giving them the bone of lower drug costs. He could set egg, milk and butter prices but that’s a scattered multi-order operation. Bringing Big Pharma to heel is a one shot really big deal.

If he pulls it off, and it keeps the wage earners with him, that’s politics played Don Corleone style. There’s probably few wage earners not facing pharma bills strangling them. It’s not a healthy population. When prices are reduced, you have access because access is being able to afford what you need. And pharmaceuticals are not buying a home or college tuition. It’s a life and death trade.

We can lean a bit more on Puzo’s The Godfather to speculate as to how the President will bring Big P:harma “around.” Tariff easements of needed imports of course. Regulatory easements of course. Get the FDA and other regulatory agencies out of the way when it comes to new products approval. But still, Big Pharma’s bottom line may be crushing, at least as the Leviathan is now operating. “Equalization” of cost will be a Stalin like blow to private enterprise.

Will the President survive it? Probably, but the old time American free enterprise capitalist banner will need a mend. Of course, this entire electoral, Constitutional democracy will need a mend. Both parties, or what’s left of them, mending against the mend.

Back to Puzo’s politician. I speculate that what will push Big Pharma to bend is something like a public declaration by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt that the pharmaceutical industry is engaged in defying the President in carrying out the mission the American People elected him to accomplish: to make America great again by making a deal, which is the President’s great talent, in which Americans pay the lowest prices in the world for the drugs. I can’t understand why any company would oppose this.”:

Along the way, the President will of course make clear to Ubi and Big Pharma elite that various agencies and departments under the President’s auspices have many ways of making their lives difficult and in the long run, miserable.

Thus, an offer that can’t be refused.

It will take a long time to sort through the wreckage here. It’s already difficult to know where we were or how we were. Perhaps because there was nothing perfect about it.

But affordable drug costs for all those who have had to choose between paying those or the rent or the groceries, is a wonderful thing.

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