Touting Deal on Drug Prices, Trump Pivots to Pressing for Lower Health Insurance Premiums

President Trump says he will soon convene a meeting of health insurance executives to urge them to lower premiums for hard-pressed American consumers.The president announced the initiative, which he said he thought of only moments earlier, at a Friday afternoon White House event where he announced that pharmaceutical firms have agreed to a series of dramatic price cuts.He said that he will call leaders of the insurance companies next week and set up a meeting in Washington or Florida.Health insurance premiums are of rising concern to many Americans, including more than 20 million who face steep increases when Biden-era Obamacare subsidies expire at the end of the year.Democrats tried unsuccessfully to get the GOP to extend the subsidies as part of the Big Beautiful Bill Act. Democrats then forced a partial government shutdown over the issue but eventually caved without getting the extension.Some Republicans fear voters are going to blame them for the rising premiums, giving Democrats an issue that could help them take control of the House.In the meeting with insurance executives, Mr. Trump hopes to replicate the success he announced Friday in persuading nine pharmaceutical companies to agree to cut prices. He has now secured pricing deals with 14 of the 17 largest drug companies.Promising the reductions will be “fast and furious,” Mr. Trump said the companies — which have long sold their prices at deeply discounted prices abroad — will now sell their flagship drugs in America at the same prices as in other developed countries.The manufacturers include Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis, and Sanofi.The president says the agreements will reduce prices on drugs that treat numerous costly and chronic conditions, including type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, asthma, hepatitis, HIV, and others.The agreements will provide state Medicaid programs access to the lower prices. The prices will be offered on the government’s TrumpRX website that is set to launch next month.Among some examples cited by the president, Bristol Myers Squibb will reduce the price of its HIV medication, Reyataz, from $1,449 to $217 for patients purchasing directly through TrumpRx.Sanofi said it will reduce the price of its prescription blood thinner, Plavix, from $756 to $16. The company said it will also sell its insulin products for $35 per month.The pharmaceutical manufacturers also committed to invest a total of $150 billion in creating manufacturing plants in the United States. “This is affordability in action,” the Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, Dr. Mehmet Oz, said.

Touting Deal on Drug Prices, Trump Pivots to Pressing for Lower Health Insurance Premiums

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