Trump pushes Big Pharma to alter pricing models

President Donald Trump on Thursday sent letters to heads of major pharmaceutical manufacturers, urging them to lower costs of proscription drugs by embracing "most-favored-nation" (MFN) pricing for the U.S.

"Make no mistake: a collaborative effort towards achieving global pricing parity would be the most effective path for companies, the government, and American patients," he wrote. "But if you refuse to step up, we will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices."

Trump specifically asked that those companies offer the MFN price to Medicaid recipients and to promise that they wouldn't sell the same drugs for lower costs to comparably developed nations.

The president sent the request specifically to the heads of AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Genentech, Gilead, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Regeneron, and Sanofi.

At issue, Trump said, is the disparity in pricing that the companies charge Americans, compared to other nations. He specifically highlighted that the American market accounts for 75% of global profits and insisted that the American system had effectively subsidized lower costs for other nations.

Trump later published the letters on Truth Social.