To the editor,

You can’t turn on the TV news without hearing that the price of gasoline at the pump continues to inch its way to $5 a gallon. Likewise, food prices keep climbing, with the price of ground beef hovering around an all-time $8 per pound.

Let’s not forget how the cost of prescription drugs is going up, up, up. Remember when President Trump promised last December to lower the cost of prescription drugs by “400 percent, 500 percent, and even 600 percent”? 

Americans not only pay high prices for prescription drugs, we pay the highest prices in the world, according to a recent study by AARP, the nonpartisan advocate for persons aged 50-plus. The 25 most popular brand-name medications have increased in price by an average of 81 percent. At the same time medications have dropped in price in other high-income countries.

Why? In the U.S. drug companies set the prices. But other countries can negotiate the price as part of allowing a new drug to enter their market.

A 2022 law signed by former President Biden allows Medicare to negotiate prices for the most widely used, highest cost drugs, and so far, the costs for 25 of the most popular drugs have decreased. But there’s so much more for the current administration to do on fulfilling President Trump’s promise.  

Even my teenage neighbor knows it’s mathematically impossible to reduce prices by 100 percent (let alone 500 percent), which would make the drugs free. More false promises are a bitter pill to swallow for those, like members of my family, who rely on prescriptions. How about some results?  

Pam Fricke

New Richmond