Health Care

Poll: Majority think Trump’s drug plan won’t lower prices they pay

A majority of the public thinks that President Trump’s drug-pricing plan will have no impact on how much they and their family pay for drugs, a new poll finds.

The poll from Politico Politico and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health finds that 57 percent of the adults surveyed think the plan will make “no difference” in the prices they pay for drugs, while 22 percent of those polled said they would pay less and 13 percent said they thought they would pay more.

Trump, who unveiled an outline of the plan in May, has attacked drug companies for their prices and promised that reductions are coming.

{mosads}Just 27 percent of adults said they had heard or read about Trump’s drug pricing plan, though, the poll finds.

Key elements of the plan received favorable ratings in the poll, such as requiring TV ads for drugs to disclose the drug’s price, which 63 percent of adults said they favor.

The administration last week tried to step up its efforts on the drug pricing plan in the face of media coverage that has questioned how much of a difference it will actually make.

For example, in a potentially consequential move, the administration floated the idea of allowing imports of drugs from abroad to increase competition and address price spikes. However, the proposal would only address a narrow portion of drugs, those that are old and no longer protected by patents, not new drugs.

The poll surveyed 1,001 adults by telephone from June 27 – July 2, with data weighted to reflect the demographics of the national adult population. The margin of error is 3.8 percentage points.