White House: Drug Prices Dropped 11 Percent Under Trump

A White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) report released this week found that drug prices fell by more than 11 percent under President Donald Trump.

A White House CEA report found that President Trump’s actions have reduced prescription drug prices. The CEA detailed that, under former President Barack Obama, drug prices continued to increase and only started to fall after Trump took the oath of office.

The CEA wrote that prescription drug prices fell more than 11 percent and well below general inflation.

“In 2018, prescription drug prices even declined in nominal terms over the calendar year for the first time since 1972,” the White House council wrote.

The CEA attributed much of this to the president’s signing of the 2017 Drug Competition Action Plan and the 2018 Strategic Policy Roadmap. The CEA said the reforms enhance “choice and price competition in the biopharmaceutical markets.”

“We estimate that the results of these actions will save consumers almost 10 percent on retail prescription drugs, which results in an increase of $32 billion per year in the purchasing power of the incomes of Americans (including both consumers and producers),” the council added.

The president’s progress on reducing the cost of prescription drugs follows as a Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll found that health care is the most important issue for all voters as well as swing voters. Swing voters said that health care was one of the most motivating issues for swing voters to participate in the 2020 presidential election.

During the State of the Union address in February, Trump promised to do more to lower prescription drugs and called on Congress to pass Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act.

Trump said:

My administration is also taking on the big pharmaceutical companies. We have approved a record number of affordable generic drugs, and medicines are being approved by the F.D.A. at a faster clip than ever before. (Applause.) And I was pleased to announce last year that, for the first time in 51 years, the cost of prescription drugs actually went down. (Applause.)

And working together, Congress can reduce drug prices substantially from current levels. I’ve been speaking to Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa and others in Congress in order to get something on drug pricing done, and done quickly and properly.

“I’m calling for bipartisan legislation that achieves the goal of dramatically lowering prescription drug prices. Get a bill on my desk, and I will sign it into law immediately,” the president said.