In his lat­est broad­side on drug prices, Trump plays the Medicare ne­go­ti­a­tions card

Don­ald Trump plans to use the mas­sive lever­age of Medicare and Med­ic­aid spend­ing as a tool to rein in prices — a tac­tic that has long been feared by bio­phar­ma.

In an in­ter­view late Sat­ur­day with the Wash­ing­ton Post, the pres­i­dent-elect al­so said he was putting the fi­nal touch­es to a new “in­sur­ance for every­one” plan to re­place Oba­macare, though he de­clined to pro­vide specifics.

Trump set off a 5-alarm in­dus­try­wide fire alert last week when he in­sist­ed dur­ing an im­promp­tu di­a­tribe dur­ing his press con­fer­ence that phar­ma com­pa­nies had been “get­ting away with mur­der” on drug prices, which he vowed to end once he gets in of­fice in a few days. In the most re­cent in­ter­view, he piled on the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try, in­sist­ing that low­er­ing drug prices was cen­tral to mod­er­at­ing the price of health­care and the in­sur­ance need­ed to cov­er care.

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