Donald Trump signed four executive orders on Friday, aiming at lowering the steep prices prescription drugs usually carry. The move comes in the wake of the president facing an uphill re-election battle and strong criticism over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Health policy experts claim those executive offers will probably offer patients minimal relief and may take months to come to fruition if they are implemented in the first place. The orders comprise permission to import some drugs from Canada and change how discounts negotiated by pharmacy benefit managers reach Medicare patients.

The most radical order compels Medicare to shell out the same amount of money for drugs that patients are given in the hospital as part of Medicare Part B that other countries pay. Trump has given pharmaceutical industry time until Aug. 24 to propose a deal to him before he implements it.

Noting that the fourth executive order is a very tough one, the president said there may not be a need to implement it. Since reporters did not receive this executive order immediately from the administration, it was unclear whether or not the president signed it, but he confirmed he would be meeting with pharmaceutical executives next week.

Assistant director of Harvard Medical School's Program on Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law  Ameet Sarpatwari claims the ideas included in the executive orders aren't newfangled and aren't as meaningful as the White House suggests.

This move simply reflects the desperation sparked by Trump's sinking in the polls and need to show that he is working on his campaign commitment from 2016, on which there hasn't been any sort of action until now, Sarpatwari told NPR. He says it remains to be seen whether the administration will take a long time to bring these executive orders to fruition after making a big deal of signing them.

While he admitted that the executive offers could offer noteworthy relief, but suggests they would take several months to implement, noting that some of these orders have stipulations that could put them on hold indefinitely. One such executive order involves passing on discounts that pharmacy benefit managers negotiate at the pharmacy counter for Medicare patients.

The aforesaid discounts contribute toward bringing premiums overall down, instead. One of the sections in this order suggests that before it takes effect, it will be imperative for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to confirm that the order will not trigger federal spending, premiums, or patients' total out-of-pocket costs to shoot up.