President Trump is angry that Pfizer and Moderna announced promising results for their Covid-19 vaccines after the election, The Washington Post’s Paige Winfield Cunningham reports, and is now seeking to impose a rule that would require pharmaceutical firms to accept lower prices for some drugs.
The so-called “most favored nation" policy would set prices paid by Medicare at the lowest level paid by any country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Trump had threatened to impose the rule before, but drugmakers thought the administration had run out of time.
“This is basically Trump being pissed off because he thought the industry campaigned against him and delayed in announcing the [vaccine] results, so he is going to get back at them with favored nations,” a GOP lobbyist told Winfield Cunningham. The rule would be difficult to impose in the few days the administration has left, however, and could be subject to legal challenges or reversal at a later date.