Why are drug prices so high in America? Trump doesn’t have the right answer

When Donald Trump spoke about drug prices on 19 December, he struck a familiar note. Americans, he said, were paying far too much for medicines – and it was everyone else’s fault. There would be no talk of reining in private insurers or pharmaceutical profits. Instead, Trump blamed foreign governments for getting a better deal. Countries like France, Germany and Japan, he argued, were piggybacking on the United States by keeping their drug prices low. Later that day, at a rally in North Carolina, he performed an imaginary showdown with Emmanuel Macron. Trump claimed he had told the French president…