Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public

Health, where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading

health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to Public Health Question at

jhhu.edu.

That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.

It's Lindsay Smith Rogers.

This week, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at reducing prescription drug costs, which,

depending on the medication, can cost 10 times as much in the United States than in other countries.

Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Johns Hopkins professor Jerry Anderson about what the proposal

entails and whether it has a shot at making a real difference in prices.

Let's listen.

Jerry Anderson, thanks so much for joining me.

Well, I'm glad to be here.

So I have you here today because I wanted to discuss a recent executive order from President

Trump on lowering prescription drug costs.

I know that this is a cause near and dear to your heart and your research.

So I'm wondering if you could start by telling us what he has ordered.

So the first thing to recognize is why he has ordered it.

And that is that the United States spends three to four times more to buy a drug than other

industrialized countries. We've done some research a couple of years ago where we showed the three to four times difference.

But what we also showed was that there are some drugs where the United States pays literally 100 times more than other industrial drugs for exactly the same pill.

...