STAT+: Trump wants Europe to pay up for drugs to help lower prices for Americans. It won’t be easy
U.S. officials have argued that Europe should be paying more for drugs to help lower Americans' prices. But whether they have enough leverage for force that change is unclear.
LONDON — In announcing his plan to lower prescription drug prices, President Trump argued that both Americans and drug companies could benefit. Critical to making this happen, he said, would be getting Europeans — whom he cast as freeloaders in the global pharmaceutical system — to pay more for their medicines.
It may not be so easy.
In outlining his “most-favored nation” proposal to tie U.S. drug prices to those paid by other developed countries, Trump highlighted discrepancies between costs stateside versus those in Europe, a long-running fact that Trump framed as an injustice. No longer, he and other administration officials said, would the U.S. subsidize drugmakers’ research projects that resulted in medicines that benefited the whole world.
