For Immediate Release: Thursday, October 25, 2018
Contact: Morgan Grogan, morgan.grogan@berlinrosen.com, 512-913-8875
On Medicare Drug Prices, Trump is All Talk, No Action
Trump Scapegoats Other Countries, Ignores Sabotage of ACA in his Medicare Drug Prices Speech
Washington, DC – Ahead of President Trump’s speech today with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Medicare drug prices, Health Care for America Now Executive Director Margarida Jorge released the following statement:
“President Trump’s Hail Mary proposal to lower Medicare drug prices is full of empty promises and grand claims that voters will never see enacted. His plan scapegoats other countries, but does nothing to lower costs or hold prescription drug companies in the United States accountable for gouging consumers to maximize their profits.
“In fact, Trump and the GOP have done the very opposite: they have rewarded prescription drug companies for raising the cost of prescriptions drugs most commonly used by seniors with huge tax breaks, even giving the 10 biggest drug companies an extra $76 billion tax break on profits they stashed offshore. Meanwhile, drug prices here continue to skyrocket, increasing 130 times faster than general inflation for brand name drugs over the course of just one year.
“Every action President Trump and the GOP have taken on health care has put the reins in the hands of Big Pharma and stolen more protections and power from consumers. This eleventh-hour proposal is just a desperate political stunt to try to win the voters Trump has repeatedly betrayed by putting affordable, quality health care further out of reach and doing all he can to let insurance companies go back to charging people with pre-existing conditions more for their healthcare. But voters don’t need more lip-service at election time, they need policies that make a real difference in lowering the price of their prescription drugs. After nearly two years in office, President Trump has failed to pass policies that require Medicare to negotiate fully and directly with drug companies and that protect Americans from corporate drug price gouging.”
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Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is the national grassroots coalition that ran a $60 million five-and-a-half year campaign from 2008-2013 to pass, protect, and promote the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and protect Medicare and Medicaid. HCAN has come back together to fight the Republicans’ all-out effort to take away America’s health care and put people at the mercy of the health insurance companies again.
