President Donald Trump on Monday asserted at the White House that he would continue pursuing lower prescription drug costs, despite complaints from the pharmaceutical industry.
“Big pharma doesn’t mean anything to me other than we want them to do a great job,” Trump said during a press conference. “We want them to get their vaccines.”
The president said that drug costs were cheaper in countries like Canada and Germany and that American consumers should enjoy the same prices.
“You will see over a period of – fairly short period, drug prices are going to be tumbling down at numbers that nobody would have ever believed possible,” Trump said.
Trump noted that pharmaceutical companies and members of Congress were calling him, begging for him to stop the push for reduced prescription drug prices.
“As you probably noticed, big ads have been taken against me by big pharma,” Trump said. “Very big ads. Very massive buy.”
The president last month signed four executive orders in an effort to reduce drug costs to seniors, including easing drug importation, discounts on insulin and requiring Medicare to match the prices of drugs to those paid by foreign countries.
“How they allowed this to happen, representatives of our country, standing at these podiums or in the Oval Office, how they allowed this to happen is just to me incredible,” Trump said. “We have been working on this for a long time.”