President Donald Trump said he has a commitment from some of the nation's largest drugmakers to voluntarily reduce the prices of their medicines. He said the administration plans to give more details in a couple of weeks.
Neither the White House nor the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services responded to questions about which companies had agreed to lower their prices or any other details.
"We're going to have some of the big drug companies in, in two weeks, and they're going to announce, because of what we did, they're going to announce voluntary massive drops in prices," Trump said at the White House on May 30.
Trump revealed the news during a signing ceremony for the Right To Try Act, which would permit Americans with a life-threatening disease or condition to seek experimental treatments without having to go through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's long-standing compassionate-use process.
The president said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told him a day earlier that "we're seeing a big, tremendous improvement" in drug prices already because of the administration's plan, which was unveiled May 11, to lower the costs of Americans' prescription medicines.
"That's already happening," Trump said.
"People are going to see, for the first time ever in this country, a major drop in the cost of prescription drugs," he added. "That's going to be a fantastic thing."
Trump also said that Azar and Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta plan to soon finalize their efforts to permit small businesses or other groups to pool together to form association health plans and use their consolidated buying power to negotiate with insurers for coverage.
The administration is also expected to finalize its rule that would expand short-term plans — often called "skimpy plans" or "junk insurance" by opponents — from the current three-month limit to a full year.
Both types of plans are intended to be cheaper coverage options, but the insurance industry and other critics have said that some patients could be left without certain types of coverage, including for prescription medicines.
"We're going to have great, inexpensive, but really good healthcare," Trump said.
"For the most part, we would have gotten rid of a majority of Obamacare," he said. "Could have had it done a little easier, but somebody decided not to vote for it," Trump said, likely referring to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whose vote against the Senate bill led to the defeat of the chamber's effort in 2017 to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
Right to try
In signing the Right To Try Act, Trump said "thousands of terminally ill Americans will finally have the help, the hope and the fighting chance — and I think it's going to be better than chance — that they will be cured, that they will be helped, that they'll be able to be with their families for a long time or maybe just for a longer time."
"We're able to give them the absolute best, as to what we have at this current moment, at this current second," he added.
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb responded, "We are," when Trump said the agency chief was "very happy" with the new law.
Gottlieb initially had expressed concerns about the legislation in October 2017, testifying that the bill's "life-threatening disease or condition" criteria was too broad and "could sweep in a whole range of conditions for which we didn't intend," such as chronic illnesses such as diabetes.
He noted that diabetes, in particular, was life-threatening, though not immediately so.
To implement the new law, Gottlieb said, the FDA would "build on our long-standing efforts to help patients and families who are facing life-threatening diseases or conditions in a way that seeks to protect their autonomy, their safety and the safety of others following in their paths."
"Countless American lives will ultimately be saved," Trump said, adding that he anticipated possibly as many as "hundreds of thousands."
A top White House official, however, late last week said that neither Gottlieb nor Azar could be held accountable if the right-to-try law does not demonstrate that lives have been saved as Trump and the congressional supporters of the bill have promised.
