Trump Plans Nationwide Medicaid Drug Pricing Model

President Donald Trump is set to announce Friday that all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico will join the GENEROUS model linking some Medicaid drug prices to those in other developed countries. He will be joined by several governors in the Oval Office. The White House Council of Economic Advisers projects $27.6 billion in state savings and $36.6 billion in federal savings over a decade; broader administration figures exceed $64 billion. A May estimate cited $529 billion over 10 years from wider most-favored-nation deals. The administration has signed agreements with more than two dozen drugmakers, including Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. Medicaid already receives mandatory discounts under existing law. The step comes ahead of the November midterms. Steve Ubl of PhRMA called the policies "importing foreign prices from socialist countries" and said they "would mean less treatments and cures and would jeopardize the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America." Kathy Hempstead of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said Trump wants Congress to codify the arrangements but that "no one knows what is in these deals." JD Hayworth of the Pharmaceutical Reform Alliance called it "meaningful progress, but that progress remains incomplete." Savings effects are hard to assess because the agreements have not been made public.