In early July, Trump said his administration was working on a drug pricing executive order with a “favored-nation clause, where we pay whatever the lowest nation’s price is.” Trump has called the lower prices paid by other nations “global freeloading.”
Trump, a Republican, has struggled to deliver on a pledge to lower drug prices before the November 2020 election. Healthcare costs are expected to be a major focus of the campaign by Trump and Democratic rivals vying to run against him.
The Trump administration earlier this month scrapped an ambitious policy that would have required health insurers to pass billions of dollars in rebates they receive from drugmakers to Medicare patients.
Also in July, a federal judge struck down a Trump administration rule that would have forced pharmaceutical companies to include the wholesale prices of their drugs in television advertising.