Trump Reaches Deals with Nine More Pharmaceutical Companies to Slash Drug Prices
President Donald Trump has struck deals with nine more pharmaceutical companies to slash drug prices for patients.
Trump announced the deals with Alcon, Astellas Pharma, BeOne Medicines, BridgeBio, CSL, Kyowa Kirin, Sun Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and UCB on Monday in the Oval Office while flanked by pharmaceutical executives.
“I’m thrilled to announce a major expansion of one of our signature affordability initiatives, something that people have been trying to get for years, for decades, and I’m not even sure that other presidents tried,” Trump said of his most favored nation (MFN) drug pricing initiative.
“Nine new pharmaceutical companies are committing to deliver their lowest drug prices for American patients,” he added.
The agreements ensure that every state Medicaid program will have access to MFN drug prices for all nine companies’ products, which the White House projects will save Americans across the country billions of dollars.
WATCH — President Trump Makes Major Healthcare Announcement:
Moreover, the deals will lower costs “on drugs that treat numerous costly, chronic, and even rare diseases, including hemophilia, Parkinson’s disease, macular degeneration, glaucoma, liver disease, skin conditions, and various forms of cancer,” per the White House. All new innovative medicines the companies launch are guaranteed to have MFN pricing.
Additionally, the companies have committed to invest a collective $19.6 billion for U.S. manufacturing, and some companies are donating a substantial amount of ingredients to the Strategic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Reserve (SAPIR), according to the White House;
- UCB will contribute 163 tons of levetiracetam, an anticonvulsant used to control and prevent certain types of seizures, to the SAPIR.
- Sun Pharma will contribute 71.4 tons of clindamycin and 6.75 tons of doxycycline; both antibiotics to treat bacterial infections, to the SAPIR.
- Teva Pharmaceuticals will contribute 45 metric tons of metronidazole, an antibiotic and antiprotozoal used to treat certain bacterial and parasitic infections, and 4.8 tons of amlodipine, an antihypertensive drug, to the SAPIR.
- Astellas will contribute 25 kg of tacrolimus, an immunosuppressant used to prevent organ rejection in people who have had organ transplants, to the SAPIR.
These mark the 18th-26th MFN deals that Trump has secured since last fall, and nearly 90 percent of the branded drug market is included in the agreements, per the White House. Other pharmaceutical companies that have agreed to MFN deals include AstraZeneca, EMD Serono, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis, Regeneron, Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson, and AbbVie.
