LONDON — President Trump has for a year demanded that wealthy countries in Europe spend more on medicines so the U.S. can pay less. His campaign has introduced a new period of uncertainty across the continent.
While there’s little evidence that the prices of medications in Europe have yet been jacked up, countries are facing questions about whether drugmakers will try to charge more and how strained health systems will respond. There are also questions about what it could mean for access to medicines for patients, with the industry openly threatening to withhold drugs from markets that won’t meet their demands for higher prices — or, in pharmaceutical parlance, to properly value innovation.
Trump’s drive to even out the price of medicines among countries also pokes at a tricky question when trying to compare drug prices — namely, how much a drug costs in the first place.
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