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Thursday, February 02, 2017

Trump tells drug-company execs to drop prices, promises to cut regulations

President Trump told pharmaceutical executives Tuesday he wants lower drug prices, and he pledged that the government will speed up approval times for new medicines.

“You folks have done a terrific job over the years, but we have to get prices down for a lot of reasons,” Mr. Trump said at the White House. “We have no choice. For Medicare, for Medicaid, we have to get the prices way down.”

The president urged the executives around a conference table to bring back their manufacturing operations to the United States, promising to cut regulations and speed up the Food and Drug Administration’s consideration of new drugs. He said it’s “disgraceful” that companies spend on average $2 billion to develop a drug and can wait as much as 15 years for a final decision by the FDA.

“We’ll also be streaming the process so that, from your standpoint, you can actually get a drug approved if it works, instead of waiting many, many years,” the president said.

Federal law bars the government from negotiating with drug companies to bring down the price of drugs for seniors under Medicare. Democratic lawmakers have often proposed to change that law.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

He did not "Tell" them to drop their prices he told them that he was going to streamline the process so that they could drop their prices. he identified a problem and he met with them to resolve the problem. that is a far cry from Telling them to do something without giving them the ability to do so (ie get the government out of their way)

Anonymous said...

Need to ban them from advertising on TV, magazines, and radio, that adds a big costs to the price of pills.

Anonymous said...

Working with rather than telling what needs to be done. That's a SOUND and genuine concept. WTF didn't that happen over the last 8 years???? Amazing such stupidity.