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Trump's rollback of Biden's executive order on prescription prices sparks uncertainty in pharmacies
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — President Donald Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders in his first two days in office, including repealing President Joe Biden's executive order lowering prescription drug costs for Americans.
ABC10 spoke with pharmacists Tuesday who are preparing for the future after this change. From being able to address patient questions to how this could impact your local pharmacy, there are still a lot of moving parts.
Hidden in the headlines of Trump's massive executive order release is something with the potential to impact more than 6 million Californians on Medicare.
"I was shocked," said Ten Acres Pharmacist Sonya Frausto.
It repeals Biden's Executive Order #14087 from Oct. 14, 2022, entitled 'Lowering Prescription Drug Costs for Americans.'
Biden's order set out to do three things: have Medicare prescription plans offer generics for $2 copays, improve Medicare recipient access to cell and gene therapy often used to treat things like cancer and speed up the process for access to effective new treatments.
"(We're) scrambling to understand what's going on and how are we as pharmacists going to be able to provide education to patients and physicians to allow patients to still have access to these medications at the lowest possible price," Frausto said.
Something still on Trump's chopping block is the Inflation Reduction Act. He ordered federal agencies to stop spending money on it.
According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, lower prices for some of the most expensive and most used medications would go into effect in 2025, and they were set to negotiate on 15 more big name drugs.
"Ozempic was one, Breo the inhaler used to help patients control their asthma or COPD, Linzess which is another medication - not generic - used to help patients with GI issues. These are medications we see very frequently, very common," Frausto said.
The Inflation Reduction Act also capped out of pocket expenses for Medicaid at $2,000 and insulin at $35 a month. Local pharmacies like Ten Acres and Pucci's were concerned how it would affect them.
"There were some problems with the proposal that pharmacies were going to have to carry the cost of those drugs that were going to be rebated. For independent pharmacies like ours, it could be as much as $27,000 per month on average," said Clint Hopkins, with Pucci's Pharmacy.
Both Ten Acres and Pucci's agree the fallout of the new executive order could result in access issues, especially as big box store pharmacies continue to close locations.
"Some of these medications are super expensive for even us to purchase and the reimbursement from the pharmacy benefit managers tend to below some of our costs associated with this so we've head to steer patients to go through mail order or to go to some of the big box chains to get their medications filled," Frausto said.
President Trump expressed interest in addressing prescription drug prices in his administration. The approach he will take is unknown at this time.
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