By Steve Holland and Michael Erman
WASHINGTON, Aug 31 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump announced a new round of drug-pricing agreements with international pharmaceutical companies and some smaller biotechs on Monday, part of a push to make healthcare more affordable for Americans.
Deals were signed with nine companies including Astellas, BeOne Medicines, CSL, BridgeBIO, Sun Pharmaceutical, Teva and UCB SA.
These companies have offered drugs to state Medicaid programs at most-favored-nation prices, Trump said in an Oval Office event with executives of the companies, describing this as “a tremendous discount, which should bring down the cost of your medical care by tremendous amounts.”
U.S. patients currently pay by far the most for prescription medicines, often nearly three times more than in other developed nations, and Trump has been pressuring drugmakers to lower their prices to what patients pay elsewhere.
The deals will build on agreements the administration struck with 17 of the world’s largest drugmakers, including Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Amgen, starting last year. The drugmakers agreed to offer lower prices comparable to what is paid in other developed countries, referred to as “most-favored-nation” pricing.
Those companies agreed to cut some prices for federal health programs and sell some medicines directly to patients through a Trump-branded website, in return for tariff relief.
SMALL DRUGMAKERS HAVE DELAYED DEALS
Smaller and mid-sized drugmakers had been slow to sign onto drug-pricing deals, Reuters has reported.
A Reuters report in June found that only Japan’s Astellas had confirmed applying for the Medicaid pricing program by that point, with executives at companies such as Ionis Pharmaceuticals saying they saw little financial benefit in joining.
It is not yet clear how much the deals will save the government or patients. Medicaid already gets steep discounts from drugmakers under existing law, and most people covered by the program pay little out of pocket for prescriptions.
The White House has held several high-profile events with pharmaceutical executives this year to promote its efforts on healthcare costs, part of a broader push to highlight affordability before this year’s midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.
The administration has said its broader drug pricing push, including the earlier deals with large pharmaceutical companies, could save $64.3 billion in federal and state spending over the next decade, but that number is speculative.
(Additional reporting by Kamal Choudhury and Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru and Yasmeen Abutaleb in Washington; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)
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