When encountering a public problem, people tend to fall into one of two camps: one camp, the larger one, says, “There oughta be a law.” The other one asks, “How has the government created or aggravated the situation?” We know which camp Maestro Trump belongs to.

Take prescription-drug prices. Because Americans pay higher prices on average for prescription drugs under patent (but not for generics) than people in other countries pay, Trump, who used to call price controls “socialist,” has ordered the drug companies “to offer American consumers the most-favored-[developed-]nation lowest price.” He wants private companies to lower their prices at home and raise them abroad.

Is this a command? Trump’s executive order goes on: “should drug manufacturers fail to offer American consumers the most-favored-nation lowest price, my Administration will take additional aggressive action.” We know what that means. “If … significant progress towards most-favored-nation pricing for American patients is not delivered,” his order says, “to the extent consistent with law,… the Secretary [of health and human services] shall propose a rulemaking plan to impose most-favored-nation pricing.” Got that? Impose. …

Trump’s plan to tamper with drug prices will reduce profits to “Big Pharma”—ooh, what a scary term!—impede innovation, and make everyone less healthy in the future. Drugs currently under patent may seem expensive, but as Tabarrok points out, many modern drugs reduce the need for more costly and dangerous surgeries, and most drugs are paid for through insurance policies. (The government also makes insurance artificially expensive through mandated coverage and discriminatory tax treatment.)

Moreover, as Tabarrok says, Americans get new drugs first. So, all things considered, drug prices don’t look so bad after all. The moral and economic case for freeing the market is watertight, but that doesn’t mean what we have now is worthless and could not become worse with more intervention.

America’s interventionist medical system must be replaced by a free market in medicine. Most of every dollar spent on medical care today is paid for or mandated by the U.S. government. Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act made a flawed system worse. Coercion, which includes medical licensing, hospital certification, and official accreditation of medical schools, should be eliminated because nothing has proved better at delivering goods and services than the competitive profit-and-loss system directed at consumer satisfaction.