The Trump administration announced drug pricing agreements with nine pharmaceutical companies, including BeiGene and Sun Pharmaceutical, expanding its most-favored-nation program to 26 total drugmakers. The deals require companies to offer Medicaid most-favored-nation pricing and contribute to U.S. strategic reserves.
The Trump administration announced drug pricing agreements with nine pharmaceutical companies, including BeiGene and Sun Pharmaceutical, expanding its most-favored-nation program to 26 total drugmakers.
"Nine new pharmaceutical companies are committing to deliver their lowest drug prices for American patients," President Donald Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday, joined by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
The new companies — Alcon, Astellas, BeOne, BridgeBio, CSL, Sun Pharma, Kyowa Kirin, Teva, and UCB — pledged to sell new medications at prices comparable to the lowest in peer countries and offer drugs to state Medicaid programs at most-favored-nation prices. UCB, Sun Pharma, Teva, and Astellas will contribute 290 metric tons of active pharmaceutical ingredients to U.S. strategic reserves. All new companies except BridgeBio are headquartered outside the U.S.
Kennedy said nine out of 10 drugs prescribed in the U.S. are now covered by the deals, though the administration has declined to release full terms. The agreements come after months of drugmakers seeking to avoid Medicare pilot programs that would have linked U.S. drug costs to foreign prices.
The expansion extends a program that began in November when the administration announced agreements with 17 large drug companies, including Pfizer, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson, offering MFN pricing in exchange for three years of tariff relief. The White House has pushed Congress to codify the agreements while declining to release their details.
The deals arrive as prescription drug prices fell 3.1 percent over the past year, the largest one-year decline since 1963, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Trump and administration officials have credited the MFN deals and the TrumpRx platform for the drop, though health economists including Cynthia Cox at KFF and Jeromie Ballreich at Johns Hopkins have cited competition in the GLP-1 market, generic entrants, and Biden-era Medicare negotiations as more likely drivers. The White House says TrumpRx has saved patients over $700 million, though it has not released the methodology behind that figure. The MFN agreements apply to a narrow set of circumstances — state Medicaid programs, direct-to-consumer sales through TrumpRx, and certain GLP-1 drugs sold to Medicare or Medicaid — leaving most privately insured patients unaffected.
Medicaid already receives the lowest drug prices of any U.S. payer, and two of the new companies — Teva and Sun Pharma — specialize in generics, raising questions about the deals' incremental impact. Drugmakers are still considering legal options to overturn the administration's pricing policies, and officials have failed to get company leaders to endorse its drug pricing legislation.
The expansion locks in drug pricing reforms ahead of November's midterm elections, with Kennedy saying he and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz could lose their jobs if they failed to deliver deals. Investors will watch whether the administration releases deal terms and how the agreements affect pharma margins across the sector.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
