President Trump on Friday unveiled his administration’s plan for lowering prescription drug prices, vowing to “take on” the powerful pharmaceutical industry while calling for an end to “global freeloading” that has allowed foreign countries to pay less for American medicine.
“America will not be cheated any longer, and especially will not be cheated by foreign countries,” Trump said Friday in a Rose Garden address.
Trump said Americans, through higher drug prices at home, are essentially subsidizing the “enormous cost of research and development” for the benefit of other countries getting those drugs for cheap.
“In some cases, medicine that costs a few dollars in a foreign country costs hundreds of dollars in America for the same pill, with the same ingredients, in the same package, made in the same plant,” Trump said. “That is unacceptable.”
Said Trump, “It’s unfair. It’s ridiculous. It’s not going to happen any longer. It’s time to end the global freeloading once and for all.”
