Don't Be Too Shocked, But Trump Did Not Actually Get The Lowest Drug Prices In The World

Yeah, we figured.

Except not.

During his State of the Union address last month, Donald Trump went on and on (and on) about how he had successfully worked out an agreement with pharmaceutical companies to get American consumers the lowest drug prices in the world — through his “TrumpRx” site. But get ready to pick your jaw up off the floor, because it turns out he was not exactly telling the truth about that.

A New York Times investigation has found that, despite his claim, American consumers are still paying more than people in other countries, and, in many cases, a whole lot more. Now, we could have told you that already, but they ran the actual numbers of drugs on the TrumpRx site and compared them to Germany’s (which makes its negotiated drug prices public), only to find that German customers still pay a whole lot less than we do.

Does this mean we’re not really the “most favored nation” after all?

---

---

The Times reports:

The drugs listed on TrumpRx can cost American patients up to hundreds or thousands of dollars, while a patient walking into a German pharmacy pays next to nothing. The German health system foots the bill, and records show that, more often than not, it pays less than what the Trump administration negotiated for Americans.

The TrumpRx website shows the prices that the administration negotiated for a few dozen of the several thousand prescription medications in the United States. The list includes almost none of the most widely used drugs, like statins, or ultraexpensive drugs like cancer therapies.

Some well-known drugs on the list are Xeljanz, for autoimmune conditions, and Farxiga, for diabetes and heart and kidney problems. Both are cheaper in Germany, a rare example of a country that makes its negotiated drug prices public.

The explanation from the administration? The prices are cheaper, but only when adjusted based on the “economic conditions” in other countries. This might make some sense, if you squint, except for the fact that the money going to the pharmaceutical companies is the same.

The fact is, even the supposedly discounted prices on the TrumpRx site are of no help whatsoever to the 92 percent of Americans who have health insurance, anyway. They are only for those paying out of pocket. Even those with high deductibles will end up paying more in most cases, as those purchases will not count towards that deductible.

In other words, it’s almost entirely useless.

For a while now, the conservative “solution” to the high cost of healthcare in the United States has been to push for price transparency so that everyone would just pay out-of-pocket and get lower prices through “comparison shopping” on the free market. Like, they actually want people who are bleeding out in an ambulance to discuss the costs of treatment at various hospitals before deciding where they want to go. The TrumpRx plan fits nicely within this “solution.” The problem, of course, is that it is a deeply stupid way to do healthcare, and would mean that even more people would go totally broke as a result of healthcare emergencies.

The reason people in other countries pay less for prescription drugs is because they negotiate prices for all consumers, and then also fund healthcare with their tax dollars. It is not a big mystery, and they’re not hiding it. They pay less by cutting out the middleman and having more leverage by operating as one large health insurance group rather than a bunch of small health insurance groups. We know what works, we can see that it works, and we don’t want to do it. Because that would be socialism. Instead, we’re just going to bankrupt ourselves silly in a desperate bid to find a capitalist solution to healthcare.

The fact is, there is never, ever going to be a capitalist “solution” to healthcare that is not both very expensive and kind of stupid. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is the closest anyone is going to get — which is why mandates were the solution embraced by Nixon, Mitt Romney, and the Heritage Foundation for so many years before it was implemented — and Republicans hate that, too.

---

---

I will say, however, that this is an area in which Trump is, unwittingly, actually of some help. The fact is, Americans should be pissed off that people in other countries pay less than we do for pharmaceutical drugs, that they pay less for healthcare and get more, that they don’t have to worry that they’ll lose their house because they were severely injured in a mass shooting. They should be pissed off that pharmaceutical companies charge us exorbitant amounts for drugs and then pass the savings on to every other consumer on earth. They should be pissed off that our tax money goes to fund research and development for drugs that we then have to pay more for than people in other countries. They should be pissed off that our health insurance payments go to pay people whose entire job it is to tell us “Sorry, we’re not going to cover that.” They should believe that doing this makes us suckers, because it absolutely does. I hope he gets people good and mad about that, I really do. Because they are not mad enough about it.

I hope that he gets them so mad about it that they start to actually ask themselves why people in other countries pay so much less than we do and start considering that it might be a pretty good idea to do that ourselves, even if it is “socialism.” I hope that they start to get selfish in the right way and decide that they don’t want to pay more in healthcare in order to subsidize health care CEOs and pharmacy benefit managers instead of selfish in the stupid way, where they are willing to pay more for healthcare so that other people don’t have it.

PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!

Shocking: Pharma CEOs Bad And Greedy, Actually!

The Wall Street Journal Wants Us To Be Grateful For Our High American Drug Prices

Trump's 'Great Healthcare Plan' Is Neither Great, Healthcare, Nor A Plan. Discuss!