Trump ends program to lower prescription prices and provide disease treatments

Let’s call it the “Make Drug Prices Back Up” Executive Order.

Among the many executive orders signed Monday by new President Donald Trump was an order reversing an initiative signed by former President Joe Biden that directed Medicare and Medicaid agencies to test models that lower both prescription drug prices as well as make cell and gene therapy treatments more accessible to Medicaid recipients.

Alabama was among numerous states that chose the Cell and Gene Therapy Access Model and was accepting applications for the program through February.

Cell and gene therapies have shown promise in treating a range of diseases and have proven particularly effective in treating a number of cancers and sickle cell disease. However, the therapies are expensive and therefore were not available to most Medicaid recipients before the implementation of the pilot program. The program established federal purchasing agreements that made treatments more affordable to states, thereby giving Medicaid recipients – most of whom are children and/or live well below the poverty line – access to life-saving treatments.

Additionally, Trump’s reversal of Biden’s order ended two other programs that lowered prescription drug costs. The first program introduced a flat $2 copay to Medicare for all generic drugs – a program the government hoped would lead to more seniors taking their necessary medications.

Under the second program, Medicare paid less for drugs that received accelerated approval from the FDA. Such approval is often granted when a drug proves to be safe but not necessarily effective. In theory, the program would have resulted in manufacturers completing the FDA process before rushing ineffective drugs to market to quickly increase their profits.

All of these programs were an expansion of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which proved an incredible success compared to the struggles of other nations dealing with high inflation in the wake of the pandemic. Part of the IRA specifically addressed prescription drug prices and began with Medicare and Medicaid negotiating significantly higher drug prices and setting price caps on hundreds of drugs.

The gene and cell therapy testing program was specifically designed to help Americans better afford cancer treatments, according to Biden’s Executive Order 14087.