After President Donald Trump conclusively demonstrated last week that he is unwilling to take on the pharmaceutical industry and has no “legitimate plan” to lower drug prices, a group of 21 American and Canadian doctors on Thursday unveiled an ambitious plan that—unlike Trump’s “pharma-friendly” approach—would confront the drug industry and ensure the healthcare systems of both nations place the public good over private profit.

“Our pharmaceutical system prioritizes industry profits over public health, but it doesn’t have to be this way.”
—Dr. Adam Gaffney, Pharmaceutical Reform Working Group

“Through a series of commonsense reforms, we can increase the affordability, safety, and effectiveness of medicine for our patients,” Dr. Adam Gaffney, co-chair of the Pharmaceutical Reform Working Group and one of the authors of the new plan, said in a statement. “Our pharmaceutical system prioritizes industry profits over public health, but it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Backed by Physicians for a National Health Program—a U.S. advocacy group working to build support for Medicare for All nationwide—the physicians proposed a series of reforms that they hope will help “set an agenda for the future.”

Some of the proposals in the plan—which was published Thursday in the British Medical Journal—could be implemented within the current U.S. for-profit model, but the physicians note “full implementation” of their plan would require a universal single-payer system, which most Americans support.

The proposed reforms include:

• Allowing government to negotiate drug prices, a move Trump promised on the campaign trail but later walked back after staffing key White House positions with former pharma executives;
• Creating public divisions within the National Institutes of Health and Canadian Institutes of Health Research to “develop non-patented drugs and make them available for low-cost generic manufacture”;
• Providing all residents of the U.S. and Canada full coverage of medically necessary prescription drugs “without co-payments, co-insurance, or deductibles”; and
• Repealing rules in the U.S. that “allow private firms to obtain exclusive licenses for drugs developed through publicly funded research.”

While acknowledging that these reforms “face formidable political opposition” from the pharmaceutical industry and other powerful corporate interests, “most Americans—both Democrats and Republicans—now favor government action to lower drug prices,” the physicians note. “These are unmistakable popular mandates for change.”

“Our pharmaceutical system prioritizes industry profits over public health, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” Dr. Adam Gaffney concluded.