On Monday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that Europe is able to price fix on prescription drugs, but “you have a lot of medical tourism to the United States, because people can get drugs here that just aren’t available in Europe.”
Host Rob Schmitt asked, “Trump said today that the Europeans essentially threaten to block medications from entering their markets unless they can get it at the price that they want, which is [insane]. I don’t understand how they pull that off, because without those medications, their people are sick. But he says that’s what’s happening. Is that accurate?”
Kennedy answered, “Yeah, well, the Europeans have a different approach to health care than we do. It’s socialized medicine. Part of the cause — and there [are] advantages to that. But there [are] a lot of disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is there [are] a lot of drugs that are just unavailable in Europe. And you have a lot of medical tourism to the United States, because people can get drugs here that just aren’t available in Europe. You’re going to pay a lot more, but the drugs are here, and in Europe, they restrict them so they can say to the drug company, we’re not going to allow you to sell that drug in our country unless you give us, basically, the cost of manufacturing it. And those are the bargains that they drive. And it’s — really, it’s a form of price fixing. And we are subsidizing socialized medicine in Europe on the backs of the American citizens who are going bankrupt to pay these costs.”
Kennedy added that eliminating pharmacy benefit managers will also help lower costs.
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