Americans listened for years as politicians of both parties gathered in Washington, D.C. and promised to lower high prescription drug prices, but in the end, those politicians failed to deliver. It’s the same old story, the same old song and dance.
Those familiar circumstances are about to change. President Donald Trump recently announced he will expand the TrumpRx prescription drug discount program, increasing the number of eligible medications to more than 800 — an increase of over 1,700 percent from February. Millions of Americans can now access more low-cost prescriptions.
This discount program is only one part of a much larger Trump administration strategy to Make America Healthy Again.
One trend that keeps American drug prices high — but seldom ever gets discussed — is rising bureaucratic delays at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). President Trump’s team decided to examine that, too.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently highlighted two oncology drug approvals that finished in just 45 and 55 days, respectively. The approvals, Kennedy said, were “the fastest in [FDA] history.”
Before that, approvals for comparable drugs often took many months longer.
The significance of the Trump administration fixing this issue can’t be overstated. As a recent cancer survivor, I’m personally grateful.
A new study by Tomas Philipson, an economist and former acting chairman of the Trump White House Council of Economic Advisers, demonstrates how FDA approval delays cost Americans far more than they realize.
According to Philipson, many drugs take a decade to move from development to FDA approval. Those delays have less to do with rating a drug’s safety and more to do with bureaucratic procedures.
Philipson’s report, “The Multi-Trillion Dollar Opportunity in Reforming the FDA,” estimates that reducing FDA review timelines by one year could generate more than $10 trillion in economic value and accelerate access to lifesaving treatments.
That’s certainly nothing to sneeze at. But the lives these approval delays cost matter far more than the potential economic value they discard.
Across months of daily cancer treatments, I got to know other patients in the hospital waiting room who did not survive. Of course, faster approvals of treatment innovations could have saved some of those lives.
Every month, a promising drug is held up by red tape, and another month, patients are denied access to life-saving treatments. Every month that a promising drug is held up by red tape is another month that competitors can’t enter the marketplace with affordable generics. And it’s also another month that Americans continue to pay higher prices than necessary.
Those delays bring serious consequences.
The longer it takes to bring a drug to market, the more expensive it is to develop. Those higher costs get passed down to consumers. Delays discourage investments in future treatments. They also postpone generic competitors from entering the market and lowering prices.
Critics often frame regulatory reform as a choice between safety and speed. But that’s an unfair analogy.
Americans deserve safety standards and an efficient approval process. But when lifesaving treatments spend years in regulatory limbo after they were determined safe, nobody benefits.
The conservative approach is simple: government should protect the public and not impede progress. That principle applies just as much to healthcare as it does to energy, housing, or infrastructure.
For too long, policymakers treated rising healthcare costs as unavoidable facts of life. President Trump and Secretary Kennedy clearly believe otherwise. Today, Americans can access more treatments at lower prices because TrumpRX forces regulators to remove unnecessary barriers, accelerate approvals, and encourage greater competition.
President Trump understands that every day saved in the regulatory approval process means lower prices, more innovation, and more lives saved. For Americans who struggle to afford their prescriptions, that’s the kind of healthcare reform that actually matters.
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Michael R. Caputo is a longtime Trump advisor who served as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the first Trump administration.
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