Index tracks pharmacy payments from insurers and patients, not consumer prices
President Donald Trump has been claiming credit for new federal data showing U.S. prescription drug prices fell 0.8% in July and are down 3.1% from a year ago, the steepest year-over-year drop since 1963.
The White House said the plunging prices resulted from the Republican president’s “most favored nation” drug deals with pharmaceutical firms and the TrumpRx website, which it said are “delivering real relief to American families and putting patients first.”
But drug pricing experts said the real picture is more complicated. They noted that other factors, including a law from Democratic President Joe Biden’s time in office that allowed Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, are potentially more significant contributors to the latest consumer price index figures.
“It’s difficult to know in one number what’s going on beneath the hood,” said Juliette Cubanski, a vice president and director of the Program on Medicare Policy at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF. “I don’t think we can attribute this price reduction to any one specific policy change or initiative.”
Experts also pointed to the role of generic and biosimilar products that have come onto the market, offering competition that drives down the price of expensive brand-name and biologic drugs.
In addition, the prescription drug price index measured by the Labor Department and released last week doesn’t directly reflect how much consumers pay — it measures how much pharmacies get paid for the drugs, both by insurers and consumers.