Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, celebrated President Donald Trump's executive order to lower drug prices, telling Newsmax on Monday it's a "powerful" edict that paves a "fairer way" for Americans to pay for their medications.
Dr. Oz joined "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" to outline how the cost paid by Americans has exacerbated health problems in the U.S., given the financial strain that sometimes leads to people not buying their meds.
"And so we've got a lot of people not taking the medications that their doctors have ordered for them. This causes both an unfairness to the American people with regard to their pocketbooks, but also to their own health," Dr. Oz said.
Trump's EO, signed earlier Monday, is "going to be a fairer way for Americans to pay the price for the medications they take," Dr. Oz added.
"[T]he president has, I believe, created the most powerful executive order ever on pharmaceutical pricing, and especially with regard to healthcare," Dr. Oz said.
Trump said Monday that drug prices will go up for other countries that have historically paid less while Americans will start paying lower prices.
"Let's be fair about how much other countries pay for the important research and development that you're doing to develop new cures for all kinds of illnesses, allow the American people to continue to get access to those medications, but charge us the appropriate amount. It should be a balancing act," Dr. Oz said.
Dr. Oz gave the example of NATO after Trump went after European countries to pay more for their own protection.
"We paid less. NATO still exists. It still protects Europe. And for that reason, I believe it is a good example of what we will see when this executive order is put into place," he said.
Dr. Oz was asked about the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 that, in part, prohibited the federal government from negotiating drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry.
"That's lobbyists and pressure from the pharmaceutical industry and their allies. And this is why I think President Trump showed tremendous resilience and guts. Intestinal fortitude is what Secretary [Robert F.] Kennedy [Jr.] called it, I think it's true," Dr. Oz said. "He's going to come under intense pressure because of this executive order."
Past presidents have realized "that the pharmaceutical industry and allies have more lobbyists on Capitol Hill than there are congressmen," Dr. Oz said. "And the amount of money that's spent and to make sure that the status quo is maintained is immense, because there's large dollars that are made from the current status of how we buy medications in this country. But it's not right for America to pick up most of the tab."
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