HUGE WIN! Prescription Drug Prices Mark biggest DECLINE since 1963!!! Wash Post Re-Post

Affordability update.  Thanks to Trump RX Prescription Drug prices reorded the biggest DECLINE in 63 years!  How great is this!!  Via Wash Post/MSN.

Prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years!

Prescription drug prices recorded the biggest year-over-year drop in more than 60 years in July, a startling reduction experts chalked up to an array of factors, including more generics and discount GLP-1 weight-loss drugs.

While overall costs for medical services continued to rise, prices for medicinal drugs fell 2.7 percent over the 12 months ending in July, the largest annual drop on record, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Wednesday. Prescription drugs, part of the medicinal drug category, fell by 3.1 percent, the steepest annual decline since March 1963.

“No president in modern history has been able to drastically reduce prescription drug prices across the board except for President Trump,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an email. “This is a direct result of the President’s willingness to push the envelope with bold policies that actually put Americans and America First.”

White House officials pointed particularly to the costs of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, which Trump calls the “fat drug.” TrumpRx, which launched earlier this year, offers GLP-1 drugs for as low as $150 for a starting dose.

While only 10 drugs have had their prices negotiated so far, they are commonly used ones “and their prices would likely be reflected in the prescription drug index,” she said via email. TrumpRx, on the other hand, covers “a limited number of branded drugs,” Dusetzina said, and “aside from GLP1s, they may not be high enough volume to be included.”

Dusetzina said another Trump policy — most-favored-nation pricing, which ties U.S. prices to lower ones paid abroad — could not explain the drop in prices either, “as the models that are supposed to use this form of pricing haven’t even launched.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics category for prescription drugs does not track what drug companies charge. It tracks how much a pharmacy actually receives when it fills a prescription. That means it includes a customer’s payment at the counter plus whatever is paid by their private insurance or by Medicare Part D, the program that pays for drugs picked up from a pharmacy.

A drop in this index does not necessarily mean drugmakers have cut their prices. It can also reflect insurers and Medicare striking better deals or people switching to cheaper drugs.

Which brings up another, less glamorous source of lower prices: generics. When a brand-name drug loses patent protection, BLS waits about six months, swaps the brand in its sample for the cheaper generic and records the difference as a reduction in price.

Read more about the BIGGEST PRICE DECREASE IN PRESCRIPTION DRUGS since 1963 here, here and here.