‘Most Favored Nation’: Trump announces deal with 9 pharmaceutical companies to get lowest-cost drug in US

US President Donald Trump, in his effort to lower drug costs, announced “Most Favored Nation” pricing deals with nine morepharmaceutical companies on Friday (Dec 19). The voluntary agreements follow those made with five drugmakers – including the two manufacturers of blockbuster weight loss drugs – as the White House races to expand an initiative that has become a centrepiece of the Trump administration’s health care agenda.

The programme is aimed at encouraging drugmakers to lower the price of the drugs that are being sold in the US. The drugmakers will sell the drugs at the lowest cost available in peer countries. The drugmakers in the agreement include: Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Genentech, Gilead, GSK, Merck, Novartis, and Sanofi. Their medications are taken by hundreds of millions of Americans to treat cancer, diabetes, and autoimmune, dermatologic, neurologic, cardiovascular, and respiratory diseases.

“MFN has gone from a bold policy to an industry standard, and it’s happened in record time,” a senior Trump administration official told CNN. “What we’ve observed is initial industry hesitance collapsing into cooperation," he added.

As per analysts, Medicaid, which accounts for only about 10 per cent of US drug spending, already benefits from substantial price discounts, exceeding 80 per cent in some cases.