President Donald Trump either forgot or made up an upcoming meeting with the pharmaceutical industry that he announced would happen "this week." Before leaving for his trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin, Trump said that the drug companies would be at the White House to broker a deal that would "substantially" reduce drug prices.
When asked who would be attending the meeting and when it was scheduled, the White House refused to comment. It's now becoming clear that the reason was they were just as clueless about it as the drug companies, Bloomberg News reported.
“We are not aware of any meeting,” said Nicole Longo, who serves as the spokesperson for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
“We’re working on drug companies on substantially lowering drug prices,” Trump told the media. “I’ve put out a favored nations clause, I’ve signed it. That means we get the lowest prices anywhere in the world, and we match whoever gets the lost and the drug companies are having a real problem with that and they are coming in to see me, and we expect to get a very substantial price reduction of prescription drugs which has never been done before.”
While it may never have "been done before," it appears it still isn't happening.
It isn't the first lie Trump has told about meeting with the drug companies about a deal on lowering costs. In July, he signed an executive order that purported to mandate drugmakers sell drugs to the U.S. at prices similar to countries that have price controls in place. He claimed he would give the drug companies a month to negotiate the deal until the order went into place.
“I did a favored nations clause, meaning we pay the same price as the lowest country that has the best deal, the companies are going crazy, the drug companies,” Trump told the Republican Convention last week.
It's been over a month and not only has Trump's order not been published, no meeting ever happened.
Cutting the cost of prescription drugs is one of the many broken promises Trump pledged to fix in 2016.