The White House proudly shared an image on social media Saturday of President Donald Trump holding a printed-out Washington Post report about lower drug prices, but, as pointed out by The Guardian, experts quoted in that same report largely credit Biden-era policy for the drop.
On Thursday, the Post published a report about prescription drug prices recording its “biggest year-over-year drop in more than 60 years.” Trump waved around a printed-out copy of the report in front of journalists on Friday, asking “is anybody impressed?” And on Saturday, the White House shared a photo of Trump with the report in hand on social media with the caption: “POV: you bring the receipts.”
However, just three paragraphs into the Post’s report, it suggests that the drop in prescription drug prices was likely due to Biden-era policies.
“The White House took credit for the good news, saying President Donald Trump’s efforts to slash drug prices were working,” the Post’s report reads. “Some experts said a Biden-era policy that requires Medicare to negotiate prices for some popular prescription drugs is more likely to be driving down costs.”
Former President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in 2022, which gave Medicare the ability to directly negotiate the prices of certain high-expenditure, single-source drugs without generic or biosimilar competition for the first time in the program's history. The first 10 negotiated prices took effect in 2026, cutting costs by a minimum of 38% off 2023 list prices and saving Medicare beneficiaries an estimated $1.5 billion in annual out-of-pocket costs.
And yet, despite the Post’s report clearly pointing to Biden-era policies as the cause for the drop in prescription drug prices, Trump administration officials continued to share the Post’s report triumphantly as an accomplishment solely of Trump’s.
“All thanks to President Trump!” wrote White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung in a social media post on X, alongside a screengrab of the Post’s report. “Most-Favored-Nation prescription drug pricing and TrumpRX are making a huge difference for the American people!”