Medicare Recipients to Get $200 for Prescription Drugs, Trump Says in Charlotte

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President Trump on Thursday pledged to send $200 prescription drug coupons to 33 million Medicare beneficiaries in the coming weeks a political ploy to curry favor with seniors who view drug prices as a priority. Trump’s promise comes less than six weeks before Election Day and represents the latest step in his administration’s (and his campaign’s) efforts to amass health care talking points, even if their actions do little to save Americans money.

The administration is getting its authority to ship the coupons from a Medicare demonstration program. Nearly $7 billion required to send the coupons would come from savings from Trump’s most favored nations drug pricing proposal. That regulation has also not yet been implemented meaning the Trump administration is effectively pledging to spend $6.6 billion in savings that do not currently exist. The cards would be actual discount cards for prescription drug copays.

Trump also bragged about a new regulation allowing states and pharmacies to import prescription drugs from Canada. While the administration did publish a Food and Drug Administration regulation on importation Thursday, states would still need to apply to participate and then would have to set up new programs to actually begin importing drugs.

According to the statnews website article, It is unclear whether Trump’s promises on $200 credits for prescription drug coupons will come to fruition. Under the Constitution, it is Congress, not the White House, that is empowered to spend taxpayer money and it is unclear where the roughly $6.6 billion for the program would come from. The idea has never been formally proposed or sketched out by health officials, though the New York Times reported this week that Trump officials had tried to convince the pharmaceutical industry to pay for similar cards worth $100. The drug industry refused.