‘A friend of mine who’s slightly overweight, to put it mildly, went to a drug store in London,’ Donald Trump said aboard Air Force One. Earlier he had told reporters: ‘He was able to get one of the fat shots. “I just paid $88 and in New York I paid $1,300. What the hell is going on? It’s the same box, made in the same plant, by the same company.”’

You can see why the dealmaker-in-chief was irked. And when Trump is irked, someone usually pays the price. In May, the President signed an executive order for ‘most-favoured-nation prescription drug pricing for American patients’. It was a warning to drug companies, as well as other countries, that Americans were tired of paying nearly three times more for the same medicines as patients abroad. The US is home to less than 5 per cent of the world’s population and yet American consumers account for almost three-quarters of global pharmaceutical profits, because manufacturers heavily discount their drugs overseas and make up the difference by inflating prices in the States.

Trump’s war on drug pricing will affect other areas of British medicine beyond weight-loss jabs

As the President puts it, ‘freeloading’ foreign customers ‘get a free ride’. He’s not wrong. But while Trump may get his wish in stopping overseas health systems from getting cheaper deals, it’s not obvious that profit–making companies will cut their prices in America. The more likely response is that they’ll raise them everywhere else.

Eli Lilly, the American pharmaceutical giant behind the weight-loss jab Mounjaro, has announced that from September the recommended retail price of its strongest monthly dose in Britain will leap from £122 to £330 – inflation of more than 170 per cent. The company knows the NHS won’t actually pay that much: it has already negotiated substantial discounts for the doses it prescribes. But by hiking the list price on the highest dose (which........

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