Salon: Trump executive order on drug prices denounced as election year charade

Advocates for lowering drug prices in the United States are raising alarm over an executive order issued by President Donald Trump on Sunday that the White House purports would challenge the nation’s pharmaceutical industry but which critics say is just an election-year ploy to make it look like the president is finally following through on a 2016 campaign promise he has neglected throughout his term.

“This is a massive win for the drug industry and another broken drug pricing promise by President Trump,” said Eli Zupnick, spokesman for Accountable Pharma, in a statement Monday.

“The drug industry is going to act like this weak executive order is a horrific injustice but the reality is that they were wildly successful in lobbying their former colleagues in the Administration to delay and water down this executive order to the point where it almost certainly won’t save a single American a single penny on their prescription drugs.”