Advocate Criticizes Extension of Negotiation Delays as Total Surrender to Pharma Lobbyists
“Extending negotiation delay periods is nothing but a total capitulation to the demands of drug corporation lobbyists,” stated an advocate.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump enacted an executive order intended to postpone Medicare negotiations for a wide range of prescription drugs, granting a significant victory to the influential pharmaceutical industry, which has been vigorously opposing measures to limit its pricing authority.
The executive order, named “Lowering Drug Prices by Once Again Putting Americans First,” directs Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to collaborate with Congress to “modify” the Medicare drug price negotiation program initiated under the Biden administration. This program has already achieved notable results despite pharmaceutical companies’ attempts to obstruct it through legal challenges.
Specifically, Trump’s order proposes a four-year extension to the exemption of small-molecule prescription drugs from Medicare price negotiations. According to the Inflation Reduction Act, these drugs, generally administered in pill form and constituting 90% of the medications currently available, are not included in the price negotiation process until at least nine years following their approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
Steve Knievel, a drug policy advocate at Public Citizen, expressed concern in a statement that delaying the negotiation timeline for many drugs could undermine the intended objectives of the order, potentially reversing recent advancements in addressing longstanding U.S. healthcare issues.
“Further delaying Medicare drug price negotiation will result in higher prices for patients and taxpayers, not lower,” Knievel remarked. “The empowerment of Medicare to negotiate drug prices represents the only significant legislative action taken to confront Big Pharma’s price gouging in the last four decades. Now, Trump’s proposal threatens to weaken that crucial achievement.”
Knievel further emphasized, “Extending negotiation delay periods is merely a complete surrender to the wishes of drug corporation lobbyists who aim to continue exploiting Medicare beneficiaries and taxpayers.”
Following the announcement of the order, the advocacy group Protect Our Care accused Trump of yielding to pharmaceutical interests. “Trump just caved to Big Pharma—again,” the group stated. “His new executive order seeks to delay Medicare drug price negotiations, allowing drug companies four additional years to exploit seniors. The sole beneficiaries of this are the drug companies.”
The president’s new directive mirrors the rhetoric used by pharmaceutical lobbyists in their campaign against the Medicare price negotiation program, which they have consistently opposed.
The initial section of the order refers to the four-year disparity between when small-molecule drugs and biologics are subjected to Medicare price negotiations under existing legislation as the “pill penalty”—a term heavily promoted by the pharmaceutical industry’s main lobbying group in its critique of the Biden-era program.
The term “pill penalty” was also featured in advertisements by a group known as Seniors 4 Better Care, which—as revealed by Sludge‘s Donald Shaw and David Moore—is “not actually a seniors group but rather a cover for a lobbyist-led shell organization called the American Prosperity Alliance.”
“Seniors 4 Better Care has increased its expenditure on advertisements seemingly targeted at Trump and his close associates,” reported Shaw and Moore in February.
Earlier this year, Republican legislators in both the House and Senate, including those who have received substantial campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, introduced bills that would delay the price negotiation process for small-molecule drugs, thus aligning with the goals outlined in Trump’s executive order.
“Make no mistake,” stated Merith Basey, executive director of Patients for Affordable Drugs, regarding the legislation, “this is yet another maneuver by Big Pharma to manipulate the system to its advantage, at the cost of patients.”
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