And who decides whether the price is too high or not? It’s just adding a needless middleman who is going to get his cut from the pharma lobby.

To sum up some of the details of the article, this only applies to drugs developed using government funding. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 gave private companies the right to hold parents on drugs developed with public funding, but also included a safeguard, “march-in rights”, which gives the government rights to override those patents. The new order introduces a policy of exercising those rights in some cases.

It seems that if this is used the government would grant rights to a competitor to sell the drug at a lower price.