Biden Could Reject Trump Executive Orders While Keeping Underlying Work

After four years of the GOP-controlled Senate not passing drug-pricing legislation, the Trump administration turned to executive orders months before the election. Those orders call for: 1. basing Medicare reimbursement on the lowest drug prices among developed countries; 2. allowing states to import drugs and drug makers to import their own drugs with new codes to avoid rebates; 3. banning drug rebates; and 4. making federally qualified health centers pass 340B drug discounts on insulin and epinephrine injection to their patients.

If Biden is elected, he could strike those orders with a pen stroke. Presidents use executive orders to tell government agencies how to carry out existing laws, and presidents may revoke or change executive orders at any time, regardless of which president issues them.

Billy Wynne, chairman of Wynne Health Group, assumes Biden would rescind the executive orders out of principle, even if some of the policies are relatively in line with his own goals.

“For the EOs, in particular, I think they’ll gut those in favor of more traditional rulemaking, which really is necessary to implement most of this stuff anyway,” Wynne said.

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