US President Donald Trump has announced that his administration has reached agreements with nine additional pharmaceutical companies to provide medicines at reduced prices to state Medicaid programmes.
Trump made the announcement on Monday during an event at the Oval Office, claiming that the agreements would deliver substantial savings to Americans over a relatively short period.
“In total, these agreements are projected to save Americans more than $600 billion over a very short period of time,” Trump said.
The development forms part of the administration’s “most-favoured-nation” drug pricing initiative, which seeks to bring the prices of medicines in the US closer to those paid in other developed countries.
The policy also includes an effort to make discounted medicines available directly to consumers through TrumpRx, a website launched by the administration in February to provide Americans with discounts on selected branded drugs.
The White House said 17 pharmaceutical companies had previously agreed to voluntarily reduce their prices under the initiative over the past year.
Trump said the latest agreements bring the total number of participating pharmaceutical companies to 26, claiming they collectively account for about 90 per cent of the domestic pharmaceutical market.
“With today’s announcement, we now have 26 companies representing 90% of the domestic pharmaceutical market, and the other 10% are also coming in,” Trump said. “They have no choice.”
The nine companies named in a White House fact sheet are Alcon, Astellas Pharma, BeOne Medicines, BridgeBio, CSL, Kyowa Kirin, Sun Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals and UCB.
The administration described the companies as midsize pharmaceutical firms and said they had agreed to make their medicines available to every state Medicaid programme in the country.
According to the White House, the arrangement is expected to generate billions of dollars in savings for Americans through lower medicine costs.
Beyond the price reductions, the nine companies have also committed to investing $19.6 billion in manufacturing, according to the Trump administration.
The latest agreements represent another step in Trump’s broader effort to reduce prescription drug costs in the US and pressure pharmaceutical companies to offer lower prices to American consumers.
