Statement from Margarida Jorge, campaign director for Lower Drug Prices Now, on the news that the White House released the text of the favored nation Executive Order:
“No one should be fooled by President Trump’s latest charade on drug prices. After three and a half years of endless empty rhetoric, Americans have seen their prescription drug prices go up, not down. This Executive Order is nothing more than another PR stunt intended to distract Americans from the President’s broken promises to seniors and the 200,000 Americans that have died from the coronavirus as a result of his failed COVID response policies. A serious proposal to lower drug prices and take away drug corporations’ monopoly power to charge whatever they want requires coordinated action from Congress–like the Medicare negotiations bill that President Trump rejected last year that included international price indexing. It’s clear that this President is more interested in photo ops than passing laws to take on Big Pharma.”
“It is simply remarkable and beyond dangerous that President Trump has so politicized the vaccine process to the point that drug corporations–the least trusted industry in America in America–are now the messengers on vaccine safety. It is the job of elected officials and government regulators, not corporations, to police safety for consumers. Yet, Donald Trump continues to prioritize his own narrow political goals over the needs of the American people, undermining public health and ignoring his responsibility as President.”
Common Dreams – 9/8/20
“It is simply remarkable and beyond dangerous that President Trump has so politicized the vaccine process to the point that drug corporations—the least trusted industry in America—are now the messengers on vaccine safety,” said the public health advocacy group Lower Drug Prices Now. “It is the job of elected officials and government regulators, not corporations, to police safety for consumers. Yet, Donald Trump continues to prioritize his own narrow political goals over the needs of the American people, undermining public health and ignoring his responsibility as president.”
The Courier – 9/6/20
The mail has always been a lifeline for rural Americans to get access to health care. Last year, the postal service delivered over a billion prescriptions. Millions more now depend on the postal service for medicines because of coronavirus: There’s been a 21% increase since March in people getting medicines in the mail.
NPR – 9/4/20
“The insiders are making plenty of profit and they’re mostly doing it with our money,” said Margarida Jorge, a campaign director with the group Lower Drug Prices Now. “I’m absolutely for deploying public money in the interests of public health and the public good. But we don’t have any commitment from the administration that any of this investment is ultimately going to benefit real people.”
“The only way to beat a global pandemic is to get it under control everywhere, and that means we need vaccines that are safe, affordable and accessible to everyone. Instead of listening to public health experts about how to respond to a global pandemic, President Trump has repeatedly put politics ahead of our health, resulting in over 180,000 deaths and an economy in shambles.”
“Let’s be 100% clear on what is happening here: President Trump is putting his own political agenda and timeline ahead of science, reality and fact so he can create an ‘October Surprise’ and a vaccine before Election Day. Trump is not interested in the people’s health, he is only interested in the health of his re-election campaign. And in politicizing this process, he is putting public health at grave risk.”
