{"id":10073,"date":"2017-02-08T01:02:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T01:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2017\/02\/08\/white-house-says-medicare-should-leverage-its-buying-power-to-pull-down-drug-prices\/"},"modified":"2017-02-08T01:02:00","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T01:02:00","slug":"white-house-says-medicare-should-leverage-its-buying-power-to-pull-down-drug-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/white-house-says-medicare-should-leverage-its-buying-power-to-pull-down-drug-prices\/","title":{"rendered":"White House Says Medicare Should Leverage Its Buying Power To Pull Down Drug Prices"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Kodjak<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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Medicare accounts for about 29 percent of all spending on prescription medicines in the U.S. each year. stevecoleimages\/iStockphoto\/Getty Images<\/strong> hide caption<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Drug companies could be forgiven if they’re confused about whether President Donald Trump thinks the government should get involved in negotiating the price of prescription drugs for Medicare patients.<\/p>\n

Just a few days before Trump was sworn in he said the pharmaceutical industry was “getting away with murder”<\/a> in the way it prices medicine, and he promised to take the industry on. It was a promise he’d made repeatedly on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n

“We’re the largest buyer of drugs in the world and yet we don’t bid properly,” he said in a news conference in early January. “We’re going to start bidding and we’re going to save billions of dollars over a period of time.”<\/p>\n

But last week, Trump appeared to walk that vow back<\/a> when he met with the leaders of several giant pharmaceutical companies at the White House.<\/p>\n

“I’ll oppose anything that makes it harder for smaller, younger companies to take the risk of bringing a product to a vibrantly competitive market,” he said, sitting around a table in the Roosevelt Room, flanked by leaders of five large drugmakers. “That includes price fixing by the biggest dog in the market \u2013 Medicare \u2014 which is what’s happening.”<\/p>\n

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