Rising drug prices are one of the biggest challenges in health care in the United States. More people are using prescription drugs on a regular basis, and the costs of specialty drugs are rising faster than inflation. President Donald Trump has promised over and over again to drive down drug prices.
But Trump already has a weapon he could deploy to cut the prices of at least some expensive medications. That weapon is called “march-in rights.”
Here’s how it works. When the federal government — through an agency like the National Institutes of Health — pays for medical research that leads to an invention that can be patented, federal law gives the government a license to use that intellectual property.
