President Donald Trump is exerting pressure on major pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices in the U.S. and wants them to commit to his most-favored-nation pricing policy within weeks, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said during an interview with Axios.
On July 31, Trump sent letters to 17 leading drugmakers, including Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY), Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), and Merck (NYSE:MRK), outlining the steps they should take to adjust U.S. prices of their pharmaceutical products to match those in other developed countries in line with the MFN policy.
U.S.-based Gilead (GILD), Bristol Myers (BMY), J&J (NYSE:JNJ), Regeneron (REGN), Amgen (AMGN), and AbbVie (ABBV) also received Trump’s letters along with EU drugmakers Merck KGaA (OTCPK:MKGAF), Sanofi (SNY), GSK (GSK), AstraZeneca (AZN), Novo Nordisk (NVO), Roche (OTCQX:RHHBY), and Novartis (NVS).
“The president's going to say that you drug manufacturers cannot sell here unless you sell there at a higher price. Stop being willing to sell to them at such a low price," Lutnick said ahead of a Sept. 29 deadline Trump granted to drugmakers to comply with the policy.
According to Lutnick, President is deploying multiple executive branch agencies to achieve the outcome. "I just got the call from [Health Secretary] Bobby Kennedy. I got a call from [CMS Administrator] Mehmet Oz and said, 'OK, let's get to work on this,'" Lutnick added.
"The president was talking about this all day on Saturday. ... He was talking about 'we got to drive these prices down."
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