Trump announces ‘Great Healthcare Plan’ to bring ‘most-favored nation’ drug prices to Americans

At the core of the "Great Healthcare Plan" is a request that Congress formally adopt Trump’s "favored nations drug pricing" policy. The initiative directs pharmaceutical companies to cut prices, so they match what is charged in other developed nations, according to a White House fact sheet. Trump signed an executive order related to the policy in May.

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/2011833504452002121?s=20

"The government is going to pay the money directly to you. It goes to you, and then you take the money and buy your own health care," Trump said in a video posted to X. "Nobody has ever heard of that before, and that's the way it is."

“This proposal locks in the massive discount on prescription drugs that my administration is achieving through our most-favored-nations drug pricing agreement… It’ll bring down drug prices 80, 90 percent in some cases, just numbers that nobody’s ever heard of before,” Trump added.

Details about how the federal government would directly send payments to individuals remain uncertain, though an administration official said Thursday that officials are willing to collaborate with Congress to determine how that process would work, per Fox News.

"These are commonsense actions that make up President Trump's Great Healthcare Plan, and they represent the most comprehensive and bold agenda to lower health care costs to have ever been considered by the federal government," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday. "Congress should immediately take up President Trump's plan and pass it into law."

The plan also focuses on expanding price transparency by requiring healthcare providers or insurers that accept Medicare or Medicaid to "prominently post their pricing and fees in their place of business and ensure insurance companies are complying with price transparency requirements," the fact sheet states.

At the same time, the Senate is gearing up to vote on an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, a point of legislation that became a point of contention in Congress last year when Democrats refused to vote with the GOP to open the government for weeks on end.