West Wing Reads - How Team Trump is Keeping Drug Prices Down

How Team Trump is Keeping Drug Prices Down Most Americans like their health insurance—especially the 240 million on either Medicare or an employer-sponsored plan. Rather than kicking millions of Americans off their insurance with Medicare for All, President Donald J. Trump is reforming the healthcare system to keep costs down while protecting patient choice. “At some point, almost all Americans have been stuck with massive, unexpected medical bills or forced to make health decisions without real information or anyone to guide them,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar and White House Domestic Policy Council Director Joe Grogan write in the New York Post. “It’s one reason why President Trump signed an executive order last week to help you easily find the typical price — and what you would actually owe — for major health services before you have to purchase them,” they add. “President Trump has promised a better vision: a health care system that treats you like a person, not a number. He wants to hold providers and Big Pharma accountable.” Click here to read more. “President Trump has now gotten the US economic expansion to outlast any other in modern history,” the New York Post editorial board writes. By historical standards, even with the weak growth of the Obama era, the economy was overdue for a dip when Trump took office. “Yet it has instead remained pretty strong . . . Trump’s deregulation and tax cuts, each a stark reverse of Obama policies, changed the course.” “The Trump administration’s Peace to Prosperity plan for the West Bank and Gaza is sensible and offers the best hope for building sustainable economies in the region,” Columbia Business School economist Glenn Hubbard writes in The Wall Street Journal. If implemented, it would marshal $50 billion in investment over 10 years for the Palestinian people and neighboring Arab countries. “The White House’s new plan is based on two important economic observations. First, private business, not charity, is what drives prosperity. Second, Palestinian businesses need access to capital.” “By the left’s account you’d think the Trump Administration’s only ambition on health care is to rip insurance from the poor and sick. So note that a Health and Human Services rule finalized last month represents a dramatic expansion in health-care choices for those who may have limited insurance options,” The Wall Street Journaleditorial board writes. The new rule will allow employers to give workers tax-exempt dollars for purchasing health insurance in the individual market—another option the Obama Administration tried to limit through the Affordable Care Act. “The time is long overdue to usher in a new trade agreement with our North American neighbors. American businesses and workers have been forced to operate under a 20th century trade deal unfit for our 21st century economy,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) writes in The Columbus Dispatch. “Delaying consideration of USMCA tells our trading partners that we’re not serious about doing business with them.”