President Trump unveils a sweeping drug pricing policy, forcing pharmaceutical giants like Bristol Myers-Squibb and Gilead to slash costs—Plavix from $750 to $16, hepatitis C meds from $25K to under $2.5K—while mandating donations to America’s Strategic Reserve, including 3.5 tons of antibacterials from Merck. CEOs like Genentech’s pledge $50B in U.S. production, creating 11,000 jobs, and GSK offers deep discounts on asthma/COPD drugs. Trump claims no prior president achieved such reductions, attributing success to tariff threats and MFN pricing, now covering 95% of drugs by term’s end. Critics like Kennedy-Jr, despite political differences, call it historic, reshaping affordability for 80M Americans while accelerating domestic manufacturing from 16% to near 95%. [Automatically generated summary]
They're going to get most favored nations pricing, meaning they're going to pay our country the lowest price paid anywhere in the world.
And they will list their most popular drugs on trumprx.gov.
TrumpRx.gov.
And I didn't name it that.
Somebody named it that.
And I guess they assumed that was, did you name it Oz or Bobby name it?
We all named it together.
Okay, well, I'm honored to have the name.
And so far that's turned out because the numbers are so incredible.
It's an honor.
And you're going to get massive discounts to all consumers.
So massive discounts will be not even offered.
It's just going to be a fact.
All consumers will get massive discounts.
That's trumprx.gov.
Every new drug produced by these companies in the future will permanently be offered to American patients at most favored nation prices.
You know, people used to talk about that for years, but nobody ever did anything about it.
No other president did.
And it wasn't easy, but it worked out great, and I'm so proud of the people behind me.
As an example of the price reductions we have secured through these new agreements, Santa Fe will cut the cost of its blood thinner, Plavix, from $750 to less than $16.
Wow.
Where's Santa Fla?
Where are you?
What?
That's incredible, huh?
Could have gone to $17.
That's amazing.
And you're going to do tremendous business.
You're going to do much more business.
So that's coming from $715.
Think of that, $750.
And that's the number one blood thinner.
I don't want to know about that.
I take an aspirin to less than $16.
Think of that.
Bristol Myers-Squibb, great company, both great companies, will cut the price of HIV medication, Rayothaz, from nearly $1,500, $1,500 to $217.
And it will cut the cost of hepatitis B medication, Barrett Lud, from $1,400 to $413.
Gilead will cut the hepatitis C medication, EPLUSA, from nearly $25,000 to less than $2,500.
And all prices are like that because we're bringing them down to the world's lowest price, everything.
And these people really are pioneers.
What they're doing is so great.
And in the end, they're going to do much more business.
And I think it's going to even out for them as a company.
The other countries, the countries will have to pay more, but even for them, because of the fact that the world is quite a bit bigger, it won't be very severe, I hope.
I also want to thank these companies and their incredible executives for their generous contribution to American national security, because it's really what it is.
It's to a large extent national security.
In addition, you can't continue to pay 13, 14 times more than other countries and think you're going to have security.
Collectively, they will invest over $150 billion to build up domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing in America.
They're going to be, because of tariffs, they're coming in, and I think because of the love of our country, it may be because of the November 5th election, but because of tariffs, they're going to be coming in.
They're building already, just about all of them have started.
They're building their plants in all states all over the country, and they're building incredible pharmaceutical plants.
We're going to have close to 100% of our pharmaceuticals in a very short period of time made in the USA.
As part of these agreements, Merck will also donate 3.5 tons of antibacterials to be placed in America's Strategic Reserve.
Thank you very much.
GSX will donate over 200 pounds of ingredients to make rescue inhalers, which is a big deal.
And Bristol Myers-Squibb will donate 6.5 tons of blood thinners.
We appreciate it.
Such amazing companies.
Every president for a generation has promised to reduce drug prices, but they were talking about a little bit like that.
I am the only one of them to ever even think in terms of favored nations, and that's what this is.
Favored nations is called most favored nation.
We are now a most favored nation.
I want to thank the leaders in the room, and I also want to thank the leaders of all of the countries that had to pay a little more so that we were treated fairly.
I really do.
I want to thank the leaders of countries.
And they knew the alternative was not much of an alternative because if they didn't do it, we were going to charge them tariffs.
And the tariffs would have been much more severe than what they did.
But they did do it as soon as they realized about the tariffs.
Then they did it very easily.
Now they're very good people.
Let's start with MGen's Executive Vice President, who I already introduced, and I introduced the people here.
So I'd like to ask Bobby and Oz to say a few words.
And also, I'd like to ask if anybody would like to speak on behalf of your company or just say how great this country is doing.
And you're all building tremendous facilities now in the United States instead of other countries that we all know about.
But if you'd like to say something, so Oz, do you want to start?
Mr. President, each of the nine CEOs will speak very briefly about what they have done because it is a patriotic effort.
This is affordability in action.
We talk about it in abstract, but this is not an abstract concept.
This is a very concrete, tangible, personal reality.
Because we've got moms with sick children who cannot afford their medications.
Working families cannot make ends meet.
Seniors on fixed income.
We have 80 million people have to pay more than $100 a month for their prescriptions.
They just can't keep up.
So this is a hardcore approach to this, driven by a bold leader who's taking bold action.
With that bold action, we've now created a standard for the industry.
The nine leaders behind us run the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world.
They're joining four other, rather, five other companies that have been through this White House process over the last two months.
I want to make sure you appreciate that it doesn't happen with just the people in the room, their wonderful individuals, Chris Klump, In Hernandez, John Brooks, Theo Merkel, Corey Heidi.
A lot of folks worked their tails off to make this happen, and that's why we've gotten to the finish line.
The prices that President Trump left to the next administration on pharmaceuticals have gone up 25% until the president took office.
We are reversing that trend and making sure that Americans can afford to get the life-saving solutions.
Because if these brilliant innovators create solutions to cancer, hypertension, hepatitis, and a bunch of other viruses, illnesses that have been lethal throughout human history, but you can't afford them, then we're not treating you fairly.
And that's why what the president has done is so critically important.
He mentioned quickly the amount of money that they've contributed towards our strategic stockpile and building in this country.
But fundamentally, the health of the American people will benefit because this president took bold action.
And from my personal position, I couldn't do anything I do without Secretary Kennedy, who just does not take note for an answer and will call me even more than the president does to make sure things happen right.
And at one point in this negotiation, we both stopped answering our phones late at night because we couldn't take it anymore.
But I want to thank you, Mr. President, for doing this.
President Trump, when he was up here a moment ago, talked about how historic this is and how every one of the news outlets in here ought to have World War III size headlines about this.
And I was reminded about how astonishing this achievement is.
A couple of days ago, when one of my sons, 29 years old, very, very left-wing Democrat, and disagrees with a lot of the policies of this administration, he called me and he said, Dad, I want to tell you how proud I am about this.
This is the best achievement that could happen to our country.
This is something Bernie Sanders has been clamoring for for 25 years.
Elizabeth Warren has been clamoring for.
Joe Biden promised the American people.
President Obama, President Clinton all promised to do this for the American people.
All of them expressed their outrage, their indignation that we are paying one-tenth in some cases the price of drugs that they're selling in Europe.
We developed them here.
We manufactured some of New Jersey.
We were paying $1,300 for a jug.
Manufactured in New Jersey, the same drug, manufacturing the same plant was being sold for $88 in London.
And everybody recognized how unfair this was.
We were paying for all the innovation in this country.
And yet, the rest of the world was free-riding on it.
And President Trump told me and Dr. Haas at the beginning of this term: this is what I want you to do.
And he leaned on us.
I think both of us were very skeptical at that point that it could be done.
But I would say this is a miracle.
And I'm very grateful to all the CEOs who saw the sense in this, who understood the injustice and the unsustainability of the system, and who put public health, and particularly the public health of Americans, ahead of some of their other priorities.
And all of them came to the table, and President Trump asked us to do three things: one, to deliver the lowest prices in the world and make this affordable for Americans.
Number two, to do it in a way that we would not hurt innovation, that we would keep America as the incubator and the dominating force in incubation around innovation around the world.
And three, to bring drug manufacturing home to this country.
I can tell you, by the end of this term, 95% of the drugs, we will have MFN.
In other words, Americans will be paying the lowest price in the world, or 95% of the drugs.
You talk about affordability.
People are talking about affordability.
Nobody has done anything for affordability greater than this.
So I want to thank you, President Trump, for your leadership, for your vision, and for your relentless harassment of us to make sure this all got done.
And I really want to talk to, just thank all of the CEOs, all these companies for coming to the table in good faith, working on a very, very pragmatic agreement that allows them to continue to do the innovation that is going to save lives and alleviate suffering around the world and do it in a way that is more fair to the American people.
So we're going to entire administration, the whole government working together.
Bobby and I met at the beginning of the administration of how we could work together to bring drug prices down as the president instructed and bring manufacturing home.
So they've said they're going to have 95% of the drugs be at the lowest price in the world.
And when we walked in and the president walked in, we were making about 16% of our drugs were being made in America.
And we are having hundreds.
The people behind us are committed hundreds of billions of dollars to bring their manufacturing here and bring their research here.
And that employs Americans and keeps our drugs produced safely.
You want to know when you take that drug, that drug is made in America, overseen by the FDA, and it is safe.
So the President not only is driving prices down, he's doing a one-two punch of bringing production here.
And the third thing he's doing is when you take that drug, you know it was made in America, protected by Americans, and it's safe.
And I can't be more proud.
I think this is the most impressive thing I've ever seen because none of you, and even maybe even none of us, thought this was possible.
Only President Trump, he knew it, he drove it, and he has delivered it here today.
And I can't be more proud to be standing next to him because this is delivering for America.
Mr. President, thank you for the opportunity to work with you to improve the affordability of medicines for American patients.
Amgen recently launched Amgen Now, a direct-to-patient option for RAPATHA that cuts out PBM middlemen and significantly improves affordability for people who are uninsured, facing high out-of-pocket costs, or paying on their own.
RAPATHA will also soon be added to TrumpRx.com.
A U.S.-based pioneer for more than four decades, we've invested more than $40 billion in U.S. research and manufacturing since 2018, supported by pro-innovation policies that you've championed.
Thank you again, Mr. President.
We look forward to continuing to work together to deliver meaningful benefits and innovation for U.S. patients.
It's a true honor to be here for an agreement that we believe will make a true difference for American patients.
For 140 years, Bering Ingelheim, a family-owned company, has been committed to improving health and outcomes to save lives of patients.
With today's agreement, we believe that we have actually struck the delicate balance that there is to protect America's leadership in research and innovation and at the same time ensure that patients pay a fair price for their medicines.
So from rare diseases in oncology or colonial fibrosis, where we do research into chronic diseases, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, obesity maybe in the future, I will go quick.
We will continue to work for the American patients.
We are onshoring manufacturing to the U.S. to very rapidly, within the time of this administration, have the majority of our products produced in the U.S. Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Bristol Myersquibb is an American company that for more than 6,500 years has been protecting and extending American lives.
And today I'll make two very brief announcements.
One, we are very proud to announce that we will provide Eloquus, our number one prescribed medicine, to Medicaid for free.
We're also answering the administration's calls, as the president said, to shore up the national medicine reserves by donating more than six and a half tons of Eloquus.
These actions build on BMS's commitment to invest $40 billion in the U.S. in research and development and manufacturing.
And these investments reflect our enduring commitment to work with the administration to improve patient lives.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. President, for shining a light on the importance of our innovation and getting all countries to pay for this innovation.
I'm proud to represent Genentech, America's first biotech company.
We are offering our flu medicine, which is very important this year given the severity of the flu, Zofluza, for $50 direct to patients, and that's a 70% price reduction, and that also will be available on TrumpRX.
We're also very proud of our $50 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing and new research labs.
Our new facility in North Carolina will bring 11,000 jobs to America.
These are important steps forward for Americans and also for patients.
I see your rendering is beautiful for what you're doing.
unidentified
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. President, to you and the administration.
I think this objective of achieving the commitment to affordability and future innovation is extraordinary.
And let me just say that the company I represent, Gilead Scientists, the scientists reach for cures every day.
In fact, they've come up with medicines that have cured both certain forms of hepatitis and also certain forms of blood cancer.
And we just recently launched a new medicine that's only given twice a year to prevent HIV.
And we're working with Secretary Kennedy and his entire team, as well as the State Department, as a part of your XUS strategy to support ending the epidemic really during your term.
And so we look forward to working with you on that.
I've never been more optimistic about the innovation that exists across these companies and the impact this can have on America's health and economy.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, this literally prevents HIV almost 100% given twice a year.
And so we've, the America First State Department strategy, we've partnered with them, and we're also partnering with Secretary Kennedy and his team.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
GSK cares deeply about improving the affordability of medicines, which is why today we're announcing for the 40 million Americans who live with asthma or COPD, we're going to be significantly lowering the cost of the medicines they rely on to breathe more easily every day.
We're going to be going direct on eight of our core medicines with deep discounts, and we're investing in American health security by donating the ingredients that go into rescue inhalers like this one so that people can access them when they need them.
This triple win is on top of our commitment to invest $30 billion in American manufacturing, American research, American technology, and American talent.
And all of this to do the right thing for American patients, whether that's John in North Carolina, who says he can now visit with his granddaughters without worrying whether he will have to struggle for breath, or Marsha in Kentucky, who says if her asthma inhaler is cheaper, she can properly celebrate with her family this holidays.
Mr. President, thank you so much for your ambition for American patients and for the partnership of all of your teams so we get ahead of disease together.
Mr. President, as the others have said, I just want to say thank you for your leadership.
I reflect on your goal of driving affordability and access to Americans, but equally getting prices up outside the United States, and we're 100% supportive of your actions.
As many of the colleagues have talked about, I represent Merck, and we also are looking to what we can do on TrumpRX.gov.
In addition to bringing in our diabetes drugs, one of the things I just wanted to highlight, we have a novel oral cardiovascular drug, which has an opportunity to meaningfully lower LDL and really still go after what is the leading cause of death in the United States, which is cardiovascular disease.
It kills a million people in the United States annually.
And thanks to TrumpRX.com, you will not only be able to get this pill and have an easy-to-take pill, but it'll be easy to get and it'll be affordable.
So I appreciate your leadership and look forward to continuing to partner with you.
Mr. President, my name is Foster Simmons, CEO of Novartis.
Novartis is a 250-year-old company, and today we're the global leader in bringing advanced technologies to patients in the United States around the world, technologies like radioligand therapies and cell and gene therapies.
What I want to highlight to you is we're bringing the manufacturing of these technologies to the United States now.
We've committed to build nine new facilities, seven of them we already have a groundbreaking for.
Dr. McCarry was with me in North Carolina.
We were opening up four new plants.
Our plan is to scale manufacturing here and ensure all our critical medicines, including these most advanced technologies, are made here in the United States for U.S. patients.
I think you've convened on an extremely important subject and made more progress than perhaps anybody ever thought was frankly possible.
For Sanofi, this is another day to reaffirm our commitment to patients, our unwavering support to trying to do the right thing to help patients get better outcomes.
Put simply, affordability has been at the heart of that for a very long time.
Having concluded this contract with the President and the Administration, we find ourselves able as a joint effort to go further than we ever thought was possible.
And that's kudos to you and for what you have done.
Improving affordability and preserving innovation and rewarding innovation is a very difficult balance to take.
I think we feel the negotiations and the conversations have had the patient at the center throughout the entire time, as difficult as it may have been on occasions.
I think what many can learn from the way this was handled, put simply, is that when you bring industry and you bring government together with the spirit of doing the right thing for patients, it is almost limitless what can be achieved.
So on behalf of Sanofi, I'd like to thank you, Mr. President, and the team for what has been simply an incredible amount of progress.
So as I watch, these are the greatest business leaders, and they're beyond that.
Many are doctors, and they ended up running the biggest businesses in the country.
But you've done so much, and you made it a lot easier than we thought it would be.
You were just, you know, you understood to do the right thing.
And as I was watching, and I know all of them, not personally, a couple of them personally, but I know them all through reading lots of business magazines and other magazines and newspapers.
These are highly respected people.
And I said to myself, you know, look at what they've done.
They've done something that, and as you said, something that you never thought was possible to get done.
Most people thought for the United States to have favored nations where we have the lowest drug price in the world is unthinkable.
And I said to myself, you know, we have a thing called the Unaffordable Care Act.
It's unaffordable because the insurance companies make so much money and the insurance companies totally control the Democrats.
And I said to myself, standing watching these great leaders, and we have four other leaders coming in, Johnson ⁇ Johnson and four other very big companies, actually, very great companies.
They've all agreed.
And they'll be coming in next week, and we appreciate them too.
But they've agreed to the same thing, lowest price anywhere in the world.
I said, you know, I think that the insurance companies, we should have a meeting and we should talk to them.
Because I would say that maybe with one talk, they would be willing to cut their prices by 50, 60, or 70 percent.
They've made a fortune.
They've had stock prices that have gone up 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and even 18.
Think of this.
They went up 1,800 percent.
One of them went up.
Numbers that nobody's ever seen before.
They had a nice return, not a 2%, an 1,800% return.
One went up more than that.
Therefore, there's a lot of fat that can be cut.
And I'd like to announce here, this is just an idea that I had standing here watching these great leaders saying that we're going to have the lowest prices anywhere in the world, something that nobody would have thought possible.
And they're going to come out great.
But also donating incredible different medications, medications that are world-famous medications that one or another of them make, and donating them in some cases for free or very, very low prices.
And I said, you know, I'll bet you if I called a meeting of the insurance companies, the companies that are involved with health care costs, I would be willing to bet, I think, that they would reduce their prices very, very substantially.
We could have fair health care in the country.
Now, my initial thought, and this is what I want to do as of right now, this is the alternative, is that all of the billions and billions, ultimately trillions and trillions of dollars that's paid to these companies, we're going to pay directly to the people.
But there's another way of doing it, and that's getting the insurance companies to ease up and to cut their pricing way, way down and stay part of the system.
So I'm going to call a meeting.
It could be in Florida this coming week, or it could be back in the White House the first week, not the second or third week.
I'm going to call a meeting of the big insurance companies that have gotten so rich by receiving money and really much, far, far more money than they're entitled to.
And I have a feeling maybe if they would act like these incredible, brilliant, responsible citizens behind me, people that love our country and they love the world.
I mean, frankly, they love, these are international companies for the most part.
I'm going to call a meeting of the insurance companies.
I'm going to see if they get their price down, to put it very bluntly.
And I think that is a very big statement.
And what happened here is the biggest statement of all because nobody thought a thing like this was possible.
And I think based on that, I won't even take questions today because there's no way I can take questions that are anywhere comparable to what you just witnessed.
You just witnessed drug prices that will go down at levels never thought even possible, Marty, right?
Never thought even possible.
And I think that the second biggest part of this meeting is going to be the fact that I'm going to call in the insurance companies that are making so much money and they have to make less, a lot less.
And maybe we can have reasonable health care without having to cut them out and let it all go awry.
So we're going to be calling a meeting.
It'll be either in Florida or it'll be here the first week.
And I prefer not talking and asking questions only for the reason that this is such a big announcement, meaning what these people have said and what the other four companies are going to say, which is exactly the same thing, that I really don't want to soil it up by asking questions, even questions that are very fair questions, that I'd love to answer.
So I think we have to just stop right here.
I really appreciate the fact that these companies came here.
Again, you know, a lot of the media is not aware, not really cognizant of the people standing behind me.
These are the biggest executives in the world.
And what they're doing today is monumental.
And I want to stand it on that.
And I'll see you later if you'd like.
But I don't want to be asking questions having to do with anything else.
I do want you to remember what I said about the 4.5%.
We took 100% of the new workers was in the private sector.
And we've cut tremendous numbers of government jobs.
And that's why, if you look at our numbers, they're so good.
Also, more than, I don't know if you've read this, came out a week ago, more than 50% of our trade deficit was cut.
We cut it more than 50% in a period of a few months.
Nobody thought any of these things were possible.
Thank you very much, everybody.
unidentified
If you have your insurance idea, Mr. President, it's going to keep it at us.
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