The White House has signed pricing deals with nine more pharmaceutical companies, following in the footsteps of 17 larger drugmakers.
These companies, including Alcon, Astellas Pharma, and Teva Pharma, have agreed to the Trump administration’s Most-Favoured Nation (MFN) pricing deals.
This means that 89% of the branded drug market in the US is now subject to MFN deals, according to a White House statement.
Americans pay the highest drug prices in the world, and the MFN policy is designed to tie prices to the lowest price charged abroad.
The policy aims to reduce prices for US health systems and patients and force the pharma industry to adopt more equitable pricing models.
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Pharma companies have agreed to lower their prices to MFN levels for the programme supplying Medicaid and increase investment in US-based manufacturing facilities.
The extension of the dealmaking to include smaller pharma companies comes just a few months after Trump signed an executive order imposing tariffs of up to 100% on imported brandname medicines.
This move was seen as a lever to force companies to the negotiating table.
They will apply to Medicare Parts B and D through two other MFN vehicles, GLOBE and GUARD, which are in the planning stages.
According to the Trump administration, the agreements reduce prices on drugs that treat numerous costly, chronic, and rare diseases.
Details of the commitments agreed by the new block of mid-sized companies are scant, but some said they would be donating supplies of active pharmaceuticals to the federal API stockpile.
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Teva said an agreement to lower the cost of select medicines for American patients covered by Medicaid was still being negotiated.
A White House statement claimed that the agreements include commitments of nearly $20 billion in near-term US manufacturing investments.
Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said the MFN drug pricing deals are a farce and a distraction from the administration’s failed plan to lower US drug prices.
Public Citizen argues that a better strategy would be to build international reference pricing into the Medicare drug price negotiation framework introduced under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.
Peter Maybarduk, Access to Medicines director for Public Citizen, said there is still no evidence that any pharma company has followed through on prior commitments to the Trump administration to launch new drugs at MFN-price points.
