Medicines are stored on shelves at a pharmacy on May 12, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
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Two weeks ago, President Trump sent letters In 17 top pharmaceutical manufacturers, giving them 60 days to propose plans to reduce US drug prices to align with the lowest prices offered in other developed countries.
This is an opportunity for upgrading pharmaceutical pricing in a way that brings relief to US consumers, correcting global imbalances and safeguarding innovation, the transition to the entire ecosystem of healthcare must ultimately adopt.
Most drug prices are closely focused on the retail costs of patients seeing the pharmacy meter, but these are just a fraction of the real economic image.
Trump’s directive aims to tackle a decades of imbalance: Americans pay significantly more for the same products than consumers abroad, which essentially subsidizing both foreign healthcare systems and pharmaceutical profits.
The concept of “more favored nation” could give consumers better pricing, but it also raises critical questions about maintaining innovation and ensuring access. By placing the medicinal manufacturers on the clock, the administration marks the willingness to use the negotiation and leverage of politics, similar to the strategy of tariff, to change the established practices.
As I have long argued in previous columns, focusing exclusively on high drug prices loses the biggest problem: Health care as a whole offers very little value for what we spend. The need for transparency in both cost and quality, as well as a greater assessment of the effects that are important to patients, applies to each sector, from medicinal products to hospital care.
Pharma is a practical starting point, because the public’s attention is already here, but the real goal is a change of business model at the ecosystem level. Without a wide value framework and a clear vision of how to proceed, the reforms will be pre -selected into fragmentary corrections that simply change the cost from one part of the system to another.
Some policy -making responsible have supported blunt prices as a quick solution for escalating drug prices. Experience shows that this approach distorts markets, erodes innovation and eventually harm the patients, the theme of one of my previous columns. In Europe, where prices are largely controlled, access to new treatments may be delayed or refused, a warning example for the US
Innovation is inherently dangerous: only a fraction of drug candidates ever reaches the market and yields for successful products fund failures. The suppression of returns discourages the investment required for discovery.
The goal must balance – with Europe paying more, the US pays less – they do not punish one of America’s most important and competitive sectors.
The administration made it clear that it is ready to disrupt the status quo. The disorder is more productive when channeled to structural reform. Reformation of pharmaceutical pricing can be preceded by other departments of healthcare, payments and PBMs – where abused incentives increase costs without improving the results.
Interested parties must see the 60 -day deadline not only as a compliance exercise but as an invitation to propose creative, viable models that link payment to measurable results. This is a rare alignment of political will, attention and market readiness, an environment that favors bold experimentation.
If the industry responds defensively or minimally, the potential result will be more syntactic regulation and less flexibility to innovate. On the contrary, failure to deal with price inequalities will keep us in forcing the disproportionate cost, fueling political pressure on heavy hand solutions. Our previous decades of growth modifications have left a fragmented, opaque system. The risk now is that we repeat this standard instead of reviewing the basics.
Balancing of the pharmaceutical pricing is not about punishing a sector or establishing price checks. This is the creation of a market where cost reflects value, competition rewards innovation and consumers benefit both from accessibility and access.
Pharmaceutical companies are merely the first to deal with this control, but the value conversation must be extended to every corner of the tradition of health care. At this time, if they meet with creativity and commitment, it can be a catalyst for a systematic change that has escaped us for decades.
