The Trump administration released a report on Tuesday that estimated that President Donald Trump’s deals with pharmaceutical companies would save $529 billion over the next ten years.
Affordability has become a top issue for voters as the country moves ever closer to the November midterm elections, which could determine if Republicans will continue to hold the House and Senate majorities. Trump has focused his efforts on cutting deals with drug companies so that the cost of prescription drugs in the country would no longer be substantially higher than other developed nations.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers found that federal and state governments could save $64.3 billion on Medicaid over the next decade because of Trump’s “most favored nation” drug policy.
The Associated Press reported:
The potential savings estimated by the Trump administration would be substantial as Americans spent $467 billion on prescription drugs in 2024, according to the most recent government data available. The analysis is premised on the idea that foreign countries would also pay more for their prescription drugs, which would diversify drugmakers’ sources of revenue and preserve their ability to innovate with new treatments.
The Congressional Budget Office in October 2024 estimated that a plan similar to what Trump ended up adopting could reduce prescription drug prices by more than 5%, though the decrease “would probably diminish over time as manufacturers adjusted to the new policy by altering prices or distribution of drugs in other countries.”
“Now you have the lowest drug prices anywhere in the world,” Trump said at a Friday rally at a charter school in The Villages, Florida. “And that alone should win us the midterms.”
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