Pharmacy Benefit Manager Parasites Drive Drug Costs Ever Higher
17th June 2025
President Donald J. Trump is right. Too many pharmaceuticals are too damn high, especially compared to the flea-market prices that foreign patients pay for the same drugs. Dr. Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow with the Pacific Research Institute, estimated last month that a 30-day supply of the weight-loss drug Ozempic costs $418.98 in the USA. But it’s a mere $95.30 in the UK—a 77.25% discount. Jardiance, for cardiovascular diseases $256.66 per month here. In Canada: $57.65. That’s roughly 77.5% off.
Trump’s new Most Favored Nation policy aims to bring U.S. drug bills closer to those overseas. Simply put, this initiative demands that these manufacturers sell “all brand products” at their lowest prices among major Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.
This illusionary bargain would karate chop the revenues of American drug companies. They typically spend $2.9 billion to bring each new drug to market. These firms also try to recoup losses fueled by the countless once-promising potential therapies that die anonymously in their test tubes. Most Favored Nation is like telling Hewlett-Packard that its $1,500 laptops must sell for just $200— the price that MS-13 quotes for such a freshly stolen computer.