Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, (left), Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, President Trump, and Martin Makary, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, discuss a drug price initiative on Tuesday.
Francis Chung / Politico / Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Francis Chung / Politico / Bloomberg via Getty Images
President Trump announced on Tuesday an agreement with Pfizer to sell his medicines directly to consumers at reduced prices. They will be available on a website operated by the federal government called Trumprx.gov. He said similar agreements with other drug manufacturers were in preparation.
The new website is part of a broader initiative which, according to the administration, aims to bring in the prices paid by the Americans, including Medicaid patients, more in accordance with those paid in other developed countries. The idea is sometimes called the most favored price. Under the agreement, Pfizer has agreed to charge the same price for new drugs in developed countries and the United States
“American consumers have subsidized the research and development of the whole planet,” said Trump at a press conference, joined by his health team and CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla. “They put all this on us, and yet they were also the beneficiaries. It was therefore changed.”
“I think that today we are turning the trend and we reversed an unfair situation,” said Bourla de Pfizer during the briefing.
The Trumprx.Gov website is expected to be launched in 2026 and would take consumers to direct websites to consumers of pharmaceutical companies to execute orders, according to senior administration officials who informed journalists on condition of anonymity.
Direct prices for consumers for Pfizer medicines on Trumprx.gov will be on average on average, according to a press release from the company. But there was a lack of important details on how the discounts were calculated. “The specific terms of the agreement remain confidential,” the statement said.
The reduction website would be for patients not using insurance
Other countries pay mainly less for brand prescription drugs than the United States because it has government health systems that set medication prices. Overall, the United States does not set prices, so that pharmaceutical companies can charge what the market will support.
The website agreements would only be accessible for patients not using their health insurance, according to one of the government officials who briefs journalists anonymously. And even then, drugs at reduced prices may not be affordable because they are based on high prices on the list of medicines. Consumers with health insurance may very well pay less at the pharmacy counter.
Consequently, the average consumer will probably not benefit from the Trump administration agreement, explains Ameet Sarpatwari, deputy professor of population medicine at the Harvard Medical School who specializes in pharmaceutical policy.
“I think it’s more disappointing than what the president boasts,” he said. “I think it’s more windows than the type of transformational reforms that are necessary to really relieve Americans struggling with high prices.”
The CEO of Pfizer, Bourla, has also committed to launching new drugs at the same price in the United States as in other developed countries, and proposing drugs to Medicaid to most prices of the nation, praise from Trump administration officials to be the first CEO to conclude an agreement. “He really created a model of corporate responsibility, to have put public health before his individual interests,” said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Medicaid drug prices are already low
Sarpatwari says that, since Medicaid often pays low prices for drugs anyway, and the beneficiaries of Medicaid pay very little for drugs, it is not clear if this agreement will benefit or save a lot of money.
“It is an environment where you can pretend to make significant changes that do not significantly improve the prices that Americans will pay for their drugs,” said Sarpatwari.
Tuesday’s announcement follows the Trump administration decree in May to reduce drug prices. The president had promised to charge other countries to other countries for drugs. “So we’re going to descend a lot, but the world will increase a little,” he said at the Tuesday press conference, explaining that it would make world prices for medication more fair.
During the summer, the Trump administration said that it was not satisfied with what it heard from pharmaceutical companies, it therefore sent letters to 17 of them with a list of requests, including the drop in Medicaid prices and the launch of new drugs at prices that correspond to what people from other countries pay. It also included the sale of drugs directly to consumers at lower prices.
The manufacturers of drugs had 60 days to do it voluntarily, or, the letter indicated: “If you refuse to intensify, we will deploy all the tools of our arsenal to protect American families against the abusive pricing practices of drugs.”
Negotiation included the threat of tariffs resulting from an in progress investigation to find out whether pharmaceutical imports have been a threat to national security. The agreement with Pfizer includes a period of grace of three years of these prices, and its CEO declared that the company would invest $ 70 billion to go up the manufacture of drugs sold at the national level. Prices, said Bourla, the “president is absolutely right. This is the most powerful tool for motivating behavior”.
