Experts cited in Post article point to Biden’s 2022 Medicare negotiation law
President Trump approached reporters on Friday at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland holding a printout of a Washington Post headline reading “Prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years.” Photographs released on Saturday show the president waving the page — which included the headline and the first five lines of the article — for the press pool to record and photograph.
“The headline today is exactly that,” Trump told reporters Friday at Joint Base Andrews, according to the Guardian. “Did you see it?” He read the headline aloud and held the printout up again for the cameras. “OK, got it? Everybody have it?” he asked. “I told you that was going to happen.” Before stepping away from the press, Trump repeated the line and held his hands wide apart. “Prescription drug prices down more than at any time over 60 years,” he said. “What else do I have to say?”
What the president did not mention was that the text of the Post article, published Thursday, reported that while the Trump White House “took credit for” the biggest year-over-year drop in drug prices in more than 60 years in July, independent experts “said a Biden-era policy that requires Medicare to negotiate prices for some popular prescription drugs is more likely to be driving down costs.”
The Inflation Reduction Act was a signature accomplishment of former president Joe Biden, a sprawling measure enacted in 2022 that aimed to lower prescription drug prices by requiring Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly, to begin negotiating the prices it pays drugmakers for an array of popular and costly prescription drugs. The first price reductions under the program took effect at the beginning of this year.
“If I was a betting guy on what mattered most, it would be probably stuff around the Inflation Reduction Act,” Richard Frank, a professor emeritus of health economics at Harvard University, told the Post. He added that Trump’s efforts “wouldn’t be where I’d place my money.”
Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University, told the Post the law signed by Biden was a more likely explanation for the decline in prices than any of Trump’s initiatives. While just 10 drugs have had their prices negotiated in line with the Inflation Reduction Act, Dusetzina said, they are commonly used ones “and their prices would likely be reflected in the prescription drug index.”
The price of prescription drugs fell by 3.1% in July, according to Consumer Price Index data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose former head was fired by Trump last year over weaker-than-expected job numbers he called “fake.”
On its official accounts, the White House posted the image of Trump holding the headline on Saturday with the caption “POV: you bring the receipts.” Press secretary Karoline Leavitt also shared the image. Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, posted a screenshot of the Post’s headline on his X account on Thursday — the day the article was published — without a link to the article, writing “All thanks to President Trump!”