The White House flooded social media on Saturday with an image of Donald Trump showing off the recent Washington Post headline “Prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years”, but failed to mention that experts cited in the article actually attributed the price drop to Joe Biden, not Trump.
On its official accounts, the White House triumphantly captioned the photograph of Trump: “POV: you bring the receipts.” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, also shared it.
The image was one of several taken during a staged photo-op on Friday, when Trump approached reporters with a copy of the headline he wanted them to see. Holding up a print-out of the headline, and the first five lines of the article, the president waved the page around and encouraged the press pool to record and photograph it.
“The headline today is exactly that,” he said proudly. “Did you see it?”
He then read the good news aloud and held up the print-out again for the cameras. “OK, got it? Everybody have it?” he asked. “I told you that was going to happen.”
Before stepping away from the press, Trump repeated the line that he wanted them to relay the news to the public, and held his hands wide apart as if he had just performed a magic trick. “Prescription drug prices down more than at any time over 60 years,” he said. “What else do I have to say?
What the president did not say is that the text of the article, published by the Post on Thursday, reported that while the Trump White House “took credit for” the biggest year-over-year drop in drug prices in more than 60 years in July, independent experts “said a Biden-era policy that requires Medicare to negotiate prices for some popular prescription drugs is more likely to be driving down costs”.
“The Inflation Reduction Act was a signature accomplishment of former president Joe Biden, a sprawling measure enacted in 2022 that aimed to lower prescription drug prices by requiring Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly, to begin negotiating the prices it pays drugmakers for an array of popular and costly prescription drugs,” the Post’s report noted. “The first price reductions took effect at the beginning of this year.”
The price of prescription drugs fell by 3.1% in July, according to Consumer Price Index data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose former head was fired by Trump last year over weaker-than-expected job numbers he called “fake”.
The Post quoted Richard Frank, a professor emeritus of health economics at Harvard University, expressing doubt Trump’s policies were behind the drop in drug prices.
“If I was a betting guy on what mattered most, it would be probably stuff around the Inflation Reduction Act,” Frank said, adding that Trump’s efforts “wouldn’t be where I’d place my money”.
Another expert, Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University, told the Post the law signed by Biden was a more likely explanation for the decline in prices than any of Trump’s initiatives.
While just 10 drugs have had their prices negotiated in line with the Inflation Reduction Act, Dusetzina said, they are commonly used ones “and their prices would likely be reflected in the prescription drug index”.
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, posted a screenshot of the Post’s headline on his X account on Thursday with no link to the article. “All thanks to President Trump!” Cheung wrote.
