Washington — Pfizer has agreed to lower the cost of some prescription drugs, and the White House plans to unveil a direct-to-consumer website for prescription drug purchases called “TrumpRX,” according to senior administration officials.
“The White House is planning to unveil a direct-to-consumer website for Americans to buy drugs, dubbed TrumpRx, as well as announce that Pfizer plans to lower prices on several of its medications in the U.S.,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
A senior administration official said Pfizer would sell some drugs to Medicaid at lower prices, which the Washington Post first reported. The Pfizer agreement is a part of the White House agenda to secure “most favored nation” pricing with pharmaceutical manufacturers. In May, Mr. Trump signed an executive order calling on drugmakers to lower their prices and bring them in line with what other high-income countries pay for the same drugs. He threatened to subject them to steep caps on how much they can earn from Medicare if they failed to do so.
“President Trump is doing more to lower healthcare costs than anyone else in Washington, D.C., said White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai. “While Democrats are threatening to shut down the government to subsidize health care for illegal aliens, President Trump is leveraging the power of the federal government to drastically cut drug prices for everyday Americans. Democrats talked the talk for decades about drug prices, but only President Trump is actually walking the walk.”
Monday was the deadline for drugmakers to reach agreements to bring down drug costs, the Post reported, after the president’s May executive order. While the U.S. has less than 5% of the world’s population, it funds about 75% of global pharmaceutical profits, according to the White House.
A Pfizer spokesperson said in a statement, “We can confirm an agreement has been reached.”
It’s not yet clear how much the agreement would lower drug prices for Medicaid recipients. The details of the “TrumpRX” website have not yet been shared.
The president’s anticipated announcement comes days after he announced that on Wednesday, the U.S. would begin imposing a 100% tariff on any branded or patented pharmaceutical product “unless a Company IS BUILDING their Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plant in America.” That move could increase the costs of some drugs for consumers.
The anticipated announcement also comes as Democrats remain at an impasse with the president and Republicans over keeping the government funded beyond midnight: they say the president is not doing enough to lower health care prices, and they’ve been pushing for an extension of the Affordable Care Act before premiums increase for many who have health care through the ACA.
