Trump says U.S. drug prices will drop under new deals with pharma companies

Under the deals, each drugmaker will cut prices on most drugs sold to the Medicaid program for low-income people, administration officials said, promising 'massive savings.'

U.S. President Donald Trump and nine major pharmaceutical companies on Friday announced deals that will slash the prices of their medicines for the government’s Medicaid program and for cash payers, in his latest bid to align U.S. costs with those in other wealthy nations.

Bristol Myers Squibb, Gilead Sciences, and Merck and Roche’s U.S. unit Genentech have struck deals. Novartis, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Sanofi and GSK have also signed on.

“We were subsidizing the entire world. We’re not doing it anymore,” Trump said at a White House press conference, flanked by nine drugmaker executives.

Mehmet Oz, the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service, said Regeneron, Johnson & Johnson, and AbbVie would visit the White House after the holidays for the launch of the government’s TrumpRx website.

Under the deals, each drugmaker will cut prices on most drugs sold to the Medicaid program for low-income people, senior administration officials said, promising “massive savings” on widely used medicines without giving specific figures.

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 details of each deal were not immediately available but officials said they included agreements to cut cash-pay direct-to-consumer prices of select drugs sold potentially through the TrumpRx.gov website, to launch drugs in the U.S. at prices equal to – not lower than – those in other wealthy nations and to increase manufacturing. In return, companies can receive a three-year exemption from any tariffs.