Trump Lies: Drug Prices Continue To Skyrocket

At his rally last night, Trump continued to lie and take credit for lowering prescription drug costs. The truth is that drug prices continue to skyrocket.

 

LIE: Trump claimed that drug prices are coming down.

 

Trump: “Drug prices are coming down like they’ve never seen.”

 

REALITY: Prescription drug prices have continued to skyrocket.

 

Washington Post: “Two Weeks After Trump Unveiled Plan To Lower Drug Prices, Two Cancer Drugs Got A $1,000-Per-Month Price Hike”

 

Bloomberg: “Long-term, prices keep going up: 255 brand drugs had increases between Feb. 1 and July 15, according to the drug pricing website GoodRx. The most common increase in that window was for 9 to 10 percent, a threshold that some companies have promised not to exceed.”

 

Politico: “A Wells Fargo report found 104 price increases in June and the first two days of July, with an average jump of 31.5 percent and a median increase of 9.4 percent. That followed 48 increases in May.”

 

LIE: Trump tried to take credit for Pfizer and Novartis lowering drug costs.

 

Trump: “You remember two weeks ago, Pfizer – and I take my hat off to them, I like them – they increased their prices substantially, of drugs. And I got angry about it. I think it’s probably the first time I realized what great power we have, right. I got angry. Novartis, same thing. They increased their prices. I’m decreasing the prices.”

 

REALITY: Novartis and Pfizer both said that they would only temporarily hold off on drug price increases and did not commit to reducing costs.

 

CNN Money: “The Swiss company said Wednesday that it would not raise prices this year in the United States, days after its rival Pfizer came under pressure from Trump. ‘We thought the prudent thing to do was to pull back on any further price increases in 2018 and evaluate as the environment evolves,’ Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan told Bloomberg on Wednesday.”

 

New York Times: “Pfizer, the giant multinational drug company, said on Tuesday that it would defer some price increases, after President Trump thrashed the company in a Twitter post.”

 

LIE: Trump said that he has put “mechanisms in work” that are helping to lower drug costs.

 

Trump: “And those prices are going to come down. Because we’ve put mechanisms in work. Lots of different – I won’t bore you with the complications. It’s actually, we had middlemen that were so rich they were making a fortune on drugs. Prescription drugs. We’re getting rid of all of that.”

 

REALITY: Trump’s drug plan “seems to lead nowhere” and prescription drugs cost more than ever.

 

New York Times Editorial: “It has been two months since the president released his road map for lowering drug costs that seems to lead nowhere, and about a month since he predicted the ‘big drug companies’ would announce ‘voluntary massive’ price cuts. … Taken together, the developments help explain why, a year and a half after Mr. Trump took office, prescription drugs cost more than ever.”