I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this statement from Donald Trump about pharmaceutical prices:
TRUMP: I think you know most of my team and you folks have done a terrific job over the years, but we have to get prices down for a lot of reasons. We have no choice. Medicare, Medicaid we have to get the prices way down so that's what we're going to talk about.
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The U.S. drug companies have produced extraordinary results for our country but the pricing has been astronomical for our country. We need to do better. ...
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We're going to be ending global free loading. Foreign price controls reduce the resources of American drug companies to finance drug and R&D innovation. I think you people know that very well. Very unfair to this country.
Our trade policy will prioritize that foreign countries pay their fair share for U.S.-manufactured drugs so our drug companies have greater financial resources to accelerate the development of new cures. And I think it's so important. But right now, it's very unfair what other countries are doing to us.
So the foreign price controls are bad, but here in the U.S., government action is going to bring down prices? Will prices meet somewhere in the middle?
