President Donald Trump reached agreements with nine pharmaceutical manufacturers to lower prescription drug prices in the U.S.
Here are seven things to know:
1. The agreements bring the total number of pharmaceutical manufacturers with “most-favored-nation” deals to 26, covering 89% of the branded drug market, according to an Aug. 31 White House fact sheet.
2. The nine manufacturers are Alcon, Astellas Pharma, BeOne Medicines, BridgeBio, CSL, Kyowa Kirin, Sun Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals and UCB.
3. Under the agreements, every state Medicaid program across the country will have access to most-favored-nation drug prices on products made by the nine companies. The agreements also provide the pricing on all new innovative medicines the companies bring to market.
4. The nine manufacturers also committed to invest at least $19.6 billion collectively in U.S. manufacturing, according to the White House. Several companies agreed to contribute active pharmaceutical ingredients to the Strategic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Reserve to reduce reliance on other nations.
5. The latest agreements follow previous most-favored-nation deals with 17 other drugmakers, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Amgen and Regeneron. The most-favored nation deals have also been tied to the administration’s pharmaceutical tariff policy: the 17 drugmakers that signed most-favored-nation agreements earlier were exempted from a 100% tariff on patented drugs through January 2029, while manufacturers without finalized deals face a 20% rate. It is not stated in the White House fact sheet whether that same exemption extends to the nine manufacturers in today’s announcement.
6. The nine companies join the administration’s most-favored-nation push at a moment when its centerpiece consumer-facing initiative, the TrumpRx discount website, has had a mixed track record over its past six months of operation. As of July, the site’s catalog covered fewer than 12% of the more than 800 brand-name drugs made by the 17 manufacturers that had signed most-favored-nation deals at the time, and prices on the platform have not consistently been the lowest available option for patients.
7. Separately, prescription drug prices fell 3.1% over the 12 months ending in July, the steepest annual drop in more than six decades, according to an Aug. 12 report based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data — though it is not clear how much of that decline, if any, traces back to the most-favored-nation deals specifically. A July 15 JAMA study estimated that extending most-favored-nation pricing to Medicaid could save 47 states and the District of Columbia a combined $8.6 billion on the drugs studied.
The Council of Economic Advisers estimates the administration’s most-favored-nation deals could generate $600 billion in savings over the next decade, according to the White House fact sheet.
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