President Donald Trump flanked by Vice President Mike Pence (Screenshot)

(CNSNews.com) - President Donald Trump signed a bill Wednesday that gives terminally ill patients, their doctors, and pharmaceutical manufacturers the right to try investigational medical treatments when no alternative exists.



The Trickett Wendler, Frank Mongiello, Jordan McLinn, and Matthew Bellina Right to Try Act of 2017 (S. 204) “authorizes certain patients to seek access to certain unapproved investigational drugs directly from a drug sponsor or manufacturer; limits the use of clinical outcomes and liability arising from the provision of such drugs; and provides reporting requirements for the use and outcomes of the new authority.”



S. 204 was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.



“They've been trying to have it passed for years. I never understood why, because I'd see people -- friends of mine, and other people I'd read about, where they'd travel all over the world looking for a cure,” Trump said at a signing ceremony for the bill.



He said people have to wait for years for medical trials to be completed on experimental drugs - in some cases 12 and 15 years. “Even when things look really promising, so many years, and I never understood why they didn’t do this.”



Trump called on Congress to pass Right to Try legislation during his State of the Union address in January. The bill ultimately received bipartisan support when it passed both chambers of Congress.



“So we did it, and we went through the Senate, we went through the House. The House had a bill. The Senate had a bill. We'd go and mesh them together. We got to go back and take votes. And I said, do me a favor -- tell me, which is the better bill for the people - not for the insurance company, not for the pharmaceutical companies. I don’t care about them,” the president said.



“But for many years, patients, advocates, and lawmakers have fought for this fundamental freedom. And as I said, incredibly, they couldn’t get it. And there were reasons. A lot of it was business. A lot of it was pharmaceuticals. A lot of it was insurance. A lot of it was liability. I said, so you take care of that stuff. And that's what we did,” he said. “Today I'm proud to keep another promise to the American people as I sign the Right to Try legislation into law.”



Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar will have an announcement on health care in the next few weeks, Trump said.



“We're going to have great healthcare. We'll get rid of the individual mandate. Without that, we couldn’t be doing what we're doing in a few weeks. We're going to have great, inexpensive, but really good healthcare,” the president said. “And we have two plans coming out.”



“We also have, through our great Secretary of Labor. We have a great plan coming out, and that's through associations. We're going to have two plans coming out. For the most part, we will have gotten rid of a majority of Obamacare,” Trump said.



“We're also working very hard in getting the cost of medicine down, and I think people are going to see, for the first time ever in this country, a major drop in the cost of prescription drugs. Right? And, Mr. Secretary, that's already happening,” the president said to Secretary Azar.



“You were telling me yesterday that we're seeing a big -- a tremendous improvement, and you're going to have some big news. I think we're going to have some big -- some of the big drug companies in two weeks. And they're going to announce -- because of what we did, they're going to announce voluntary massive drops in prices. So that's great. That's going to be a fantastic thing,” he said.