Many elements of President Donald Trump's plan to lower drug costs have been blocked by courts, dropped by the administration or delayed, which is causing frustration for the president, according to The Wall Street Journal.
President Trump has made lowering costs of prescription drugs a main focus of his administration. In May 2018, he released a "blueprint" to combat rising drug prices, with several proposals seeking to increase competition, improve negotiation and create incentives to lower prescription drug prices and out-of-pocket costs.
But despite those proposals, drugmakers have hiked the price of hundreds of medications this year.
A January poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that 54 percent of Americans disapprove of how the president is handling prescription drug costs.
Several elements of Trump's blueprint have been stalled or changed. A proposal calling for drugmakers to display list prices in TV advertisements was blocked by a federal court last July, after three big drugmakers sued.
Another part of President Trump's blueprint sought to revamp drug rebates, the discounts drugmakers pay to pharmacy benefit managers. The administration dropped the proposal last summer after a report found it would cost $200 billion over a decade.
A plan to create an international pricing index that would set reimbursement prices for pharmaceutical products based on what other economically similar countries pay, also has stalled.
Despite several stalled initiatives, the Trump administration has had some wins, including a bill that bans gag clauses in pharmacies and a faster-paced approval of new generic drugs.
Gag clauses have been blamed for complicating price transparency efforts at the pharmacy counter. These clauses, which insurers and pharmacy benefit managers often write into their contracts with pharmacies, prevent pharmacists from telling a consumer that it would be cheaper to buy a drug out of pocket than through their insurance.
Read the full report here.