(The Center Square) – An additional nine of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies have agreed to offer many of their most popular drugs at most-favored-nation pricing in the U.S.
This means that the U.S. will pay the lowest price for many prescription drugs among its economic peers. The initiative has been a major priority for President Donald Trump, according to top Health and Human Services officials, as he has sought to reduce prescription drug prices for Americans.
“We got a lot of calls from the president, and at one point in this negotiation, we just stopped answering our phones late at night because we couldn’t take it anymore,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The nine companies that joined the president and others from the Oval Office on Friday were the latest of a handful of pharmaceutical manufacturers that have done so over the past several months to announce similar deals with the administration. Fourteen of the 17 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world have now agreed to offer at least some of their drugs at most-favored-nation pricing in the U.S., according to Trump. Kennedy said it amounts to “95% of drugs” sold in the U.S.
For years, Americans have paid higher drug prices than their counterparts in other wealthy nations. Those higher prices help pharmaceutical companies fund their research and development, fueling innovation. Trump has argued that those companies have taken advantage of the U.S. and that America has essentially paid for innovation the whole world benefits from.
The companies present Friday were Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Genentech (a part of Roche), Gilead Sciences, GSK, Novartis, Merck & Co. and Sanofi.