Trump’s Drug Price Executive Order: What It Means for Black America When Logic Meets Reality

President Donald Trump’s recent executive order to lower prescription drug prices through a “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) policy marks a defining moment in the battle over who truly benefits from American healthcare policy. While partisan pundits will scramble to frame this through the usual left-vs-right lens, Black America has far more practical questions to ask: Will this help us afford our medication? Will this reduce the number of people in our community dying from preventable diseases? Will this force a health care system that profits off our suffering to give us a break, finally?

Black America has long carried a disproportionate share of this nation’s chronic health burdens. Black adults are 60 percent more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than white adults. Over half—56 percent—of Black adults suffer from high blood pressure, a silent killer that often goes unmanaged due to limited access to consistent care. When it comes to cancer, Black Americans face the highest death rates and the shortest survival times across nearly every type. And for Black children, the disparities are even more alarming—they are five times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma and seven times more likely to die from it than their white peers.

This harsh medical reality is only worsened by the economic one: Black Americans spend more than $35 billion annually on prescription drugs, despite often living in neighborhoods that both pharmacies and primary care providers underserve.

According to the CDC, Black adults are 60% more likely than white adults to be diagnosed with diabetes, yet are less likely to afford the insulin they need. This is not due to a lack of will, but a lack of access. High drug costs act as a de facto gatekeeper, separating the insured from the cured. If Trump’s MFN rule holds and Medicare only pays what other wealthy countries pay for the same drugs, then for the first time in decades, American citizens—Black Americans especially—won’t be penalized at the pharmacy counter simply for living in the U.S.

The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act took modest steps in drug price negotiations for a select group of drugs. Trump’s executive order takes a more aggressive stance. If the pharmaceutical industry’s panic is any indication, that means it could work—and they know it.

At a press conference supporting the executive order, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid bare why such a policy has never been passed before:

“There’s at least one pharmaceutical lobbyist for every congressman, every senator on Capitol Hill, and every member of the Supreme Court… The pharmaceutical industry spends three times more on lobbying than the next largest lobbying group. This was an issue nobody wanted to touch because it was radioactive… Now we have a president who can’t be bought, unlike most politicians in this country, and he is standing here for the American people.”

Dr. Mehmet Oz, now leading Medicare and Medicaid services, underscored the insanity of the current pricing system that has bled working-class Americans dry for decades:

“That means that we are paying in America four times more than the drug costs in other countries. Again, 100% is the baseline. It’s 289% above that baseline. It goes all the way down to when we’re paying 50% more than any other country. That’s the range. As pointed out by President Trump, half the time we’re paying three times more than other countries spend. It doesn’t make any sense for the system.

This is not just about Trump—it’s about someone finally doing what establishment politics refused to do. For decades, Black America has backed candidates who made healthcare reform central to their campaigns, yet prescription drug prices kept rising, while corporate profits soared. This executive order represents a departure from the status quo, and the industry’s response underscores that fact.

Who Gets Hurt?

Big Pharma’s claim that lower drug prices will “stifle innovation” should be seen for what it is: a scare tactic. Profit margins, not compassion, drive their innovation. When Sowell analyzed similar claims in housing or education, he noted that the people making these arguments are rarely the ones who suffer the consequences of policy failure. Likewise, it’s not CEOs who ration insulin or split pills in half—it’s everyday people, many of them Black and working-class.

Even if there is some impact on research budgets, the short-term benefit of saving lives today outweighs the speculative fear of what drugs might be developed decades from now. If the current pricing model keeps people from affording life-saving treatment now, what good is a miracle cure they’ll never live to see?

This executive order also forces a sobering question: Why haven’t Black elected officials championed such aggressive measures before? For decades, we’ve seen performative politics—marches, press conferences, hashtags—but very little structural change in how the healthcare system operates. Black communities have largely backed one party for generations, yet saw drug prices continue to climb, hospitals in our neighborhoods close, and access to care shrink.

Suppose a Republican president can do more in one stroke of a pen to lower medication costs than decades of Democratic health policy. In that case, it’s time to reassess whether loyalty is being repaid with results.

For Black America, the path forward is simple, if not easy. We must become issue-focused, not party-loyal. If Trump’s drug pricing order is upheld and enforced, we should not only support it—we should demand more of it. We should call out those who try to block it in the courts. We should pressure our elected leaders, regardless of party, to expand their reach and protect it from being repealed.

And if it fails or stalls, we must ask why—and who profits from our continued pain.