President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday outlining a series of actions intended to lower drug prices, including helping states import drugs from Canada.
The policies were more modest than proposals to reduce drug prices that Mr. Trump offered in his first term.
And one of his new directives could increase drug prices. It calls for the Trump administration to work with Congress to change a 2022 law in a way that could defang a negotiation program meant to reduce Medicare’s spending on commonly used or costly drugs.
Such a change has the potential to increase costs for the government, because it would most likely delay the existing timetable for some drugs to become eligible for Medicare price cuts.
Depending on how it is structured, it could increase Medicare’s drug spending by billions of dollars compared with outlays under the current law. The negotiation program was approved by a Democratic-controlled Congress and supported by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The executive order says that changes to the Medicare price negotiation program should be “coupled with other reforms to prevent any increase in overall costs to Medicare and its beneficiaries.”