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President Joe Biden’s United States Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) on Thursday stopped executive orders from his
predecessor designed to significantly lower prescription drug prices
for Americans, including insulin and epinephrine.
The new administration will apparently re-evaluate the executive action
from President Donald Trump toward the end of March. It remains unclear
if it will be reinstated.
“The HHS Thursday froze the former Trump administration’s December drug
policy that requires community health centers to pass on all their
insulin and epinephrine discount savings to patients,” Bloomberg Law
reported Thursday. “Centers that don’t pass on the savings wouldn’t
qualify for federal grants.”
“This freeze is part of the Biden administration’s large-scale effort
announced this week that will scrutinize the Trump administration’s
health policies,” the report noted. “If the previous administration’s
policies raise ‘fact, law, or policy’ concerns, the Biden HHS will
delay them and consult with the Office of Management and Budget about
other actions.”
A report for Bloomberg Government said the Biden administration is on a “different page” about curbing drug prices than the Trump
administration, noting of the Biden team awaiting “at least a dozen
lawsuits … over Trump-era moves to lower drug prices”:
Biden enters the presidency with at least a dozen lawsuits
waiting over Trump-era moves to lower drug prices, an issue
the new administration will likely tackle in its own way.
The Department of Health and Human Services under Biden
inherits challenges to rules that tie drug reimbursement to
cheaper foreign drug prices and allow medication imports from
Canada. It also faces complaints over Trump’s push for
drugmakers to ship discounted drugs bought by low-income
health centers to commercial contract pharmacies.
https://twitter.com/MaryVought/status/1352696236021862401
Trump signed four executive orders in July that directed the secretary
of Health and Human Services (HHS) to “[e]nd a shadowy system of
kickbacks by middlemen that lurks behind the high out-of-pocket costs
many Americans face at the pharmacy counter,” the department announced
at the time, noting that they would provide Americans more options on purchasing the drugs.
During the signing ceremony, Trump said the high price of insulin and
EpiPens have cut off low-income people in “desperate” need of the
treatments.
“The four orders I’m signing today will be on the prescription drug
market in terms of pricing and everything else to make these
medications affordable and accessible for all Americans,” said Trump, surrounded by health care professionals. “The first order will require
federal community health centers to pass the giant discounts they
received from drug companies on insulin and EpiPens directly to their
patients. You know insulin became so expensive people weren’t able to
use it. They desperately needed it.”
“We have it to a level that you’re not going to believe,” he continued. “EpiPens — likewise you have been hearing horrible stories about
EpiPens over the last six or seven years, horrible, horrible, horrible increases for where they went to almost nothing to massive amounts of
money. We’re changing that right now.”
“Under this order,” Trump added, “the price of insulin for affected
patients will come down to just pennies a day, pennies a day from
numbers that you weren’t even able to think about. It’s a massive cost savings.”
Trump said providers “should not be receiving discounts for themselves
while charging their poorest patients massive full prices.”
Along with the order ending the “shadowy system of kickbacks by
middlemen,” another order would allow states, wholesalers, and
pharmacies to offer “safe and legal importation of prescription drugs
from Canada and other countries where the price for the identical drug
is incredibly lower,” Trump underscored.
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Trump won.
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