On Monday morning, Trump and Congress passed a “most-favored-nation” drug pricing policy, aimed at offering drugs in the U.S. at a comparable price to that in other developed nations. The effort involves selling discounted drugs directly to consumers on TrumpRx, a website the Trump administration launched in February, where Americans can get discounts on name-brand medications.
“In total, these agreements are projected to save Americans more than $600 billion over a very short period of time,” Mr. Trump said during an announcement at the Oval Office. Nine additional pharmaceutical firms are to offer discounted drugs to state Medicaid programs.
According to the White House website, Seventeen pharmaceutical companies have already agreed to voluntarily lower their drug prices as part of the “most favored nation” deal over the last year. They include Alcon, Astellas Pharma, BeOne Medicines, BridgeBio, CSL, Kyowa Kirin, Sun Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals and UCB.
“With today’s announcement, we now have 26 companies representing 90 percent of the domestic pharmaceutical market, and the other 10 percent are also coming in,” Mr. Trump said. “They have no choice.”
Trump accused drug companies and other nations of ripping off the United States, arguing the US only consumes 13 percent of all prescription drugs but drug companies take 75 percent of their profits from the United States.
“We were ripped off by the pharmaceutical companies, and we were ripped off more than anything by other countries throughout the world,” he said.
The White House said the companies will provide access to their drugs to every state Medicaid program in the U.S., “resulting in billions of dollars in savings for Americans.”
The companies have also committed to spending $19.6 billion on manufacturing, according to the Trump administration.
