Pfizer has agreed to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Medicaid under a deal reached with the Trump administration, President Donald Trump said Tuesday, as he promised similar arrangements with other drugmakers under the threat of tariffs, as reported by APNews Tom Murphy and Michelle L. Price.
“Under the deal, New York-based Pfizer will charge most-favored-nation pricing to Medicaid and guarantee that pricing on newly launched drugs, Trump said. That involves matching the lowest price offered in other developed nations,” Murphy and Price wrote.
Drugs will be directly available to consumers through a website operated by the federal government called TrumpRx.gov, Sydney Lupkin reported for NPR. “The website deals would only be accessible for patients not using their health insurance, according to one of the government officials briefing reporters anonymously,” Lupkin noted. “And even then, the discounted medicines might not be affordable because they're based on high drug list prices. Consumers with health insurance could very well pay less at the pharmacy counter.”
In a press release, Pfizer stated that the majority of the company’s primary care treatments and select specialty brands will be offered at savings ranging from 50 percent to 85 percent, on average.
“We now have the certainty and stability we need on two critical fronts, tariffs and pricing, that have suppressed the industry’s valuations to historic lows. We've agreed to a three-year grace period during which time Pfizer products under a Section 232 investigation won't face tariffs, provided we further invest in manufacturing in the United States,” Albert Bourla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Pfizer, said in a statement.
“Brand-name drug prices in the United States are three times as high, on average, as those in peer nations,” Rebecca Robbins and Margot Sanger-Katz wrote for The New York Times. “Drug companies already give Medicaid, the health insurance program for lower-income Americans, significantly lower prices than they give American employers and other U.S. government programs.”
“Administration officials said that the new prices in the United States would be benchmarked against those offered in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, Switzerland and Denmark,” Robbins and and Sanger-Katz reported.
