Trump promises seniors $200 prescription drug gift certificates, but questions abound

The administration is getting its authority to ship the coupons from a Medicare demonstration program, a White House spokesman told STAT in a statement. The nearly $7 billion required to send the coupons, he said, would come from savings from Trump’s “most favored nations” drug pricing proposal. That regulation has also not yet been implemented — meaning the Trump administration is effectively pledging to spend $6.6 billion in savings that do not currently exist. The cards, he said, would be “actual discount cards for prescription drug copays.”

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Trump’s ‘most favored nation’ executive order on drug prices is a scam for seniors

Yet none of these reference pricing proposals show how they would directly reduce out-of-pocket costs for seniors at the pharmacy counter. For example, an Avalere study found that fewer than 1% of older adults in Medicare Part B would see a reduction in out-of-pocket costs as a result of the international pricing index model. In all likelihood, the prices of drugs in other countries will be more affected by the executive order than U.S. drug prices.