President Trump announces deal with Pfizer to lower drug prices, including ‘TrumpRx’ website
WASHINGTON (NBC News) -- President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that his administration has reached a deal with Pfizer for it to voluntarily sell its drugs at lower prices to Medicaid patients.
As part of the deal, Trump said, Pfizer will sell some of its drugs on a new “direct to consumer” website called “TrumpRx.” Trump said the website would be operated by the federal government, but offered few details about how the program would work.
The deal Pfizer cut with the White House will give the company a three-year grace period on Trump’s planned tariffs on pharmaceuticals made abroad, which are expected to take effect Wednesday.
The agreement on lower prices will cover “a large majority” of Pfizer's primary care medicines, along with speciality brand-name drugs, which will be offered at discounts averaging 50% and reaching as high as 85%, a spokesperson for the company said.
That includes Pfizer’s menopause drug Duavee, which will be available for as little as $30 — an 85% reduction, the spokesperson said. The overactive bladder drug Tobias will drop 85% to $42, while its skin ointment Eucrisa will see an 80% cut to $162.
The lower prices will go into effect “in the near future,” said Chris Klomp, the director of Medicare and deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Trump said moving forward, all new drugs introduced by Pfizer to the U.S. market will be sold at the lower prices.
“This is a really big announcement,” Trump said from the White House. “This is something that most people said was not doable.” Trump suggested more deals with other drugmakers would follow, but didn’t name any companies.
Experts, however, were unsure the deal would result in meaningful savings for Americans.
The deal only applies “to one company and one program,” said Drew Altman, the president and CEO of KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group.
Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, said direct to consumer sales “are not going to help the average person at all with achieving lower costs.”
Typically, with direct to consumer sales, patients must pay out of pocket, rather than use their insurance.
“Most Americans buy drugs through their insurance plan, so that would mainly help the uninsured,” Altman said.
