President Trump recently signed a wide-ranging executive order urging Congress to amend a crucial provision of a Biden-era law governing Medicare drug price negotiations, with the administration’s aim being to lower prices without kneecapping pharmaceutical industry investments in the research and development of innovative new drugs.
The executive order marks this administration’s first health-policy intervention in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Biden’s signature legislative accomplishment that, when passed by Congress and signed into law in 2022, enabled Medicare—the U.S. government—to negotiate the price of certain drugs for the first time in history.
But lowering drug prices while also maintaining incentives for drug manufacturers to continue investing the billions required to research and develop a single new drug is a tall order, with even the White House admitting it will need Congress to succeed.
