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Senate Republicans Block Sanders Amendment to Cut US Drug Prices by More Than 50%
Sen. Bernie Sanders said the amendment blocked by the GOP "would prevent pharmaceutical companies from charging more for prescription drugs in the United States than they do in Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and Japan."
Apr 23, 2026
Senate Republicans voted in the early hours of Thursday morning to reject an amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders that aimed to cut US prescription drug prices in half by mandating that Americans pay no more for medications than people in Canada and other wealthy nations.
Just two Republicans, Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, voted with every present Democrat in support of Sanders' (I-Vt.) proposed amendment to the GOP's emerging budget reconciliation package. Republicans plan to use the legislative vehicle to fund the Department of Homeland Security and its component agencies, principally Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The amendment vote put nearly every Senate Republican on the record against a policy supported by President Donald Trump. Last year, Trump signed an executive order directing federal health officials to "communicate most-favored-nation price targets to pharmaceutical manufacturers to bring prices for American patients in line with comparably developed nations."
But experts have noted that, without congressional action giving the federal government more power over drug pricing, pharmaceutical companies would not be required to comply with the proposed targets—rendering Trump's order effectively meaningless. Drug prices have continued to rise in the US despite Trump's order and his outlandish, mathematically impossible claims.
"If Trump is serious about making real change rather than just issuing a press release," Sanders said last year in response to Trump's executive order, "he will support legislation I will soon be introducing to make sure we pay no more for prescription drugs than people in other major countries. If Republicans and Democrats come together on this legislation, we can get it passed in a few weeks."
The Sanders-led amendment that Republicans blocked on Thursday called for reducing "the price of prescription drugs in the United States by more than 50% by adopting most-favored-nation drug pricing so that the American people pay no more for prescription drugs than Europeans or Canadians."
Research has shown that Americans pay at least twice as much on average for prescription drugs as people in other wealthy nations.
"This amendment is very simple," Sanders said during Senate debate on Thursday. "It would prevent pharmaceutical companies from charging more for prescription drugs in the United States than they do in Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and Japan.”
Last May, Sanders and several of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate introduced the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act, which would require federal health officials to "review brand-name drugs annually for excessive pricing and, if a drug is found to be priced excessively, to void any exclusivity granted to its sponsor."
"Under the bill, a price is considered excessive if the domestic average manufacturing price exceeds the median price for the drug in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan," according to a summary of the legislation. "If a price does not meet this criteria, or if pricing information is unavailable in at least three of these countries, the price is still considered excessive if it is higher than reasonable in light of specified factors, including development cost, revenue, and the size of the affected patient population."
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Defending TrumpRx Scam, RFK Jr. Absurdly Claims Trump 'Has His Own Way of Calculating' Percentages
"You can't just redefine how you calculate percentages," said one mathematician in response to Kennedy's claims.
Apr 22, 2026
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday tried to defend President Donald Trump's mathematically absurd claims about prescription drug prices by saying the president has his own unique method of calculating percentages.
During a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) grilled Kennedy about the president's repeated false claims that he has slashed the prices of prescription drugs by as much as 600%, which would mean that pharmaceutical companies are paying consumers to take their medications.
"President Trump has his own way of calculating," Kennedy replied. "There's two ways of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug, and you reduce it to $10, that's a 600% reduction."
RFK Jr: "President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that's a 600% reduction." pic.twitter.com/MjDNADqc8p
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 22, 2026
In fact, such a drop in price would represent a 98.3% reduction, less than one-sixth the size of the president's claims. A 600% reduction in the price of a $600 drug would mean that drug manufacturer paid consumers $3,000 every time they picked up their prescription.
Kit Yates, a mathematician at the University of Bath, marveled at Kennedy's attempts to create an alternate version of arithmetic.
"We've known for a while that the USA's current regime have been out for science, but I never thought they would try to mess with math!" Yates wrote in a social media post. "You can't just redefine how you calculate percentages."
In addition to exposing Kennedy's apparent ignorance of elementary mathematics, Warren shined a light on how the TrumpRx website misleads consumers into thinking they're being offered bargains on prescription drugs that are available elsewhere in generic varieties.
In once instance, Warren noted that TrumpRx is selling a brand-name heartburn medication for $200, whereas a generic version of the same drug is available at Costco for $16. Warren also highlighted a heart arrhythmia drug for sale on TrumpRx for $336, even though a generic version of the drug is available at Costco for $12.
Warren added that, in exchange for making select brand-name drugs available on the TrumpRx website, pharmaceutical companies have gotten exemptions from the president's 100% tariffs on imported patented medicines.
"Think about that: Big Pharma makes billions of dollars in tariff relief by listing their drugs on TrumpRx, and then they don't even lower the costs on many of these drugs," she said. "That is a great deal for Big Pharma."
Warren's analysis of TrumpRx's pricing scheme echoes a March report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), which found that the president's prescription drug website offered genuinely lower prices on “exactly one” of the 54 medications listed.
CAP also found that nearly one-third of the drugs available on the TrumpRx website have generic alternatives that were cheaper than what was being offered, and that the website made no mention of this.
Reuters reported in December that at least 350 branded medications are set for price hikes in 2026, including “vaccines against Covid, RSV, and shingles,” as well as the “blockbuster cancer treatment Ibrance.”
Later in the Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ridiculed Kennedy for claiming that, under Trump's leadership, "the American people are now paying the lowest costs in the world rather than the highest for prescription drugs."
"That is an absurd statement," Sanders said. "Nobody in the world believes that."
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Patient Advocates Warn Trump Pharma Tariffs Could 'Drive Up Costs and Create More Uncertainty'
One campaigner urged the administration to "focus on real solutions to support more transparent and diverse supply sources and make targeted investments for the supply of key medicines."
Apr 02, 2026
On Thursday, the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump's so-called Liberation Day, US advocacy groups sounded the alarm about his new tariffs targeting "patented pharmaceuticals and their ingredients under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 to bolster American national security and public health."
The administration announced a year ago that the US Department of Commerce would conduct a related investigation under that law. The resulting report was recently sent to the president, and although the findings have not been made public, Trump's executive order summarizes key takeaways and Secretary Howard Lutnick's recommended actions.
According to the order, the secretary's recommendations included "continuing to negotiate onshoring agreements related to most favored nation (MFN) pharmaceutical pricing agreements; imposing significant tariffs on pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients, so that such imports will not threaten to impair the national security of the United States; and granting preferential treatment to those companies that commit to onshore production of pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients."
Citing an unnamed Trump administration official, The Washington Post reported Thursday that "the White House has reached agreements with 13 drugmakers and expects to soon conclude an additional four." As part of these deals, companies are planning to invest at least $400 billion in new US plants.
The Post also pointed out that "some imported drugs will face much lower tariffs under trade deals Trump negotiated with five US trading partners. Goods from the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and Switzerland will face 15% levies, while drugs from the United Kingdom, which was the first to sign a deal with Trump, will be hit with a 10% tariff."
Thanks to Trump's new order, brand-name pharmaceuticals made in other countries could be hit with tariffs as high as 100%.
Merith Basey, CEO of Patients for Affordable Drugs, warned in a statement that "while these tariffs aim to pressure pharmaceutical corporations into US manufacturing and most favored nation agreements, the current MFN deals remain opaque and voluntary, and have not delivered meaningful savings for the vast majority of American patients. There's a real risk these tariffs will drive up costs and create more uncertainty for millions of patients already struggling to afford their medications."
Experts at Public Citizen, another advocacy group that has sued to expose the secretive MFN agreements, were similarly critical.
"By announcing these tariffs without even producing the evidence from the investigation that supposedly justifies them, Trump is continuing his pattern of grabbing headlines by using the word 'tariff' while engaging in secretive ongoing negotiations and opaque exemptions processes that are ripe for corporate corruption," said Public Citizen Global Trade Watch director Melinda St. Louis—who also wrote a broader takedown of Trump's trade policy published Thursday by Common Dreams.
"While strategic tariffs can be used to support domestic manufacturing and good jobs, they must be paired with real public investments and support for workers' rights, which Trump has systematically undermined," she said. "Instead, he's bullying other countries like the UK into paying more for medicines, which will lead to windfall profits for Big Pharma and do nothing to reduce US prices."
Peter Maybarduk, director of Access to Medicines at Public Citizen, stressed that "Trump's tariffs will be either ineffective or harmful for what people need, which is a reliable, plentiful, affordable supply of medicine."
Also taking aim at the "secretive arrangements that allow Trump to claim specious victories on manufacturing and high drug prices," Maybarduk explained that "in reality, many manufacturing commitments claimed under the deals were part of previously planned projects and the drug pricing commitments appear designed to largely spare drug company profits rather than earnestly address affordability concerns."
"Meanwhile the administration has given drugmakers perks like lucrative vouchers to accelerate FDA review of their medicines and a promise from the Trump administration that it will bully other countries into adopting higher prescription drug prices, using tariffs as leverage," he continued, referring to the Food and Drug administration.
"If the administration wants to fix problems like medicines shortages and fragile supply chains," he argued, "it should focus on real solutions to support more transparent and diverse supply sources and make targeted investments for the supply of key medicines."
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