Health
Trump Plan Would Tie Some Drug Prices to What Peer Nations Pay
President Trump will sign an executive order on Monday aimed at lowering some drug prices in the United States by aligning them with what other wealthy countries pay, he said on Truth Social on Sunday evening.
The proposal he described, which alone cannot shift federal policy, is what he calls a “most favored nation” pricing model. Mr. Trump did not provide details about which type of insurance the plan would apply to or how many drugs it would target, but he indicated that the United States should pay the lowest price among its peer countries.
“Our Country will finally be treated fairly, and our citizens Healthcare Costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before,” he wrote in his social media post.
Any such plan will most likely be subject to challenges in court, and it is not clear whether it will pass legal muster, especially without action by Congress.
In his first term, Mr. Trump tried unsuccessfully to enact a version of this idea for Medicare, the health insurance program that covers 68 million Americans who are over 65 or have disabilities. That plan would have applied only to 50 drugs, administered at clinics and hospitals, that are paid for by Medicare. A federal court blocked it, ruling that the administration had skipped steps in the policymaking process.
The pharmaceutical industry bitterly opposes the idea, which would almost certainly cut into its profits, and has been lobbying against it as discussions of the policy have regained steam in Washington in recent weeks. Companies have warned that such a policy would lead them to spend less on research, depriving patients of new medicines.
“Government price setting in any form is bad for American patients,” Alex Schriver, an official at the drug industry’s main lobbying group, PhRMA, said in a statement. He added, “Policymakers should focus on fixing the flaws in the U.S. system, not importing failed policies from abroad.”
Mr. Trump’s embrace of the idea sets him apart from most Republicans, who have tended to be skeptical of government price setting. Democratic lawmakers have proposed versions of the idea.
Ameet Sarpatwari, an expert in pharmaceutical policy at Harvard Medical School, said that Mr. Trump was tapping into an idea that had “populist appeal.”
Mr. Trump has long complained that the United States pays much more than other wealthy countries do for the same drugs. And he is right. In the United States, prices for brand-name drugs are three times as high, on average, as those in peer nations.
That is in spite of the fact that much of the research that leads to new drugs takes place in American laboratories and hospitals.
Drugmakers generate a substantial majority of their worldwide profits from sales in the United States and typically design their business strategy around the U.S. market.
Pharmaceutical companies argue that the higher prices in the United States come with an added benefit: Industry-funded analyses have found that patients in the United States get medicines faster, and with fewer insurance restrictions, than those in other countries.
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In addition to taking an emotional toll, childhood stress and hardships can also wreak havoc on the digestive system.
New research published in the journal Gastroenterology revealed that early experiences can rewire the body, leading to lifelong stomach issues.
Scientists at New York University focused on communication between the brain and the gut, finding that when a child experiences significant stress, this connection is disrupted.
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That disruption can manifest years later as irritable bowel syndrome, chronic stomach pain or motility issues like constipation and diarrhea.
“Our research shows that these stressors can have a real impact on a child’s development and may influence gut issues long-term,” study author Kara Margolis, a professor at NYU, said in a press release.
The presence of flagellin antibodies long before symptoms appear suggests the immune reaction may help trigger the disease rather than result from it. (iStock)
“When the brain is impacted, the gut is likely also impacted — the two systems communicate 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” she added.
The study looked at both animal models and long-term data from over 40,000 children in Denmark and 12,000 in the U.S.
Researchers found that mice subjected to early-life stress showed higher levels of anxiety and gut pain. Mice symptoms varied by gender, as females were more prone to diarrhea and males were more prone to constipation.
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Children whose mothers had depression during or after pregnancy, or those who had more emotionally difficult childhoods, were more likely to develop digestive disorders as early as age 10, the researchers noted.
Children who had harder childhoods were more likely to develop digestive orders as early as age 10. (iStock)
Unlike the mouse studies, the human data showed no differences between males and females in digestive outcomes, which suggests that early stress may affect gut-brain health for both genders during key stages of development.
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The results show how symptoms are controlled by different “pathways” in the body, doctors said. For example, the nerves responsible for gut movement are separate from the pathways that control gut pain.
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This means there is no single cure for gut issues, the team stated. If a patient has pain but no motility issues, they would need a different treatment than someone who has constipation but no pain.
By identifying these specific biological triggers, scientists say they are moving toward more personalized treatments that target the root cause of a patient’s symptoms.
The team says these results are evidence that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to gut issues. (iStock)
“When patients come in with gut problems, we shouldn’t just be asking them if they are stressed right now; what happened in your childhood is also a really important question and something we need to consider,” said Margolis.
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“This developmental history could ultimately inform how we understand how some disorders of gut-brain interaction develop and treat them based on specific mechanisms.”
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