'Immediate' falls in drug prices in US under Pfizer deal, price drop for other drugs soon

The Star

The US administration on Sept 30 announced that Pfizer will cut the price of all prescription drugs in the Medicaid programme for low-income Americans and sell new prescription drugs at a "most favoured nation" price in exchange for tariff relief.  They said the drugs manufactured by Pfizer would be sold at discounts ranging from 40% to 80% on a direct-to-consumer website called TrumpRx.  WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

Transcript

00:00Mr. President, what an honor to be here today in this office to announce a landmark agreement.

00:23So it's an historic day, because I think today we are turning the tide, and we are reversing an unfair situation.

00:31For years, other rich nations refused to pay the fair share for the medical innovation,

00:38and as a result, Americans had to assume this proportional cost on their soldiers.

00:45By this agreement that we did, we commit to onshore the production of our medicines that are consumed in the U.S.

00:54and are made outside the U.S., and for that, we are ready to unleash our investment portfolio in this country.

01:01And the President graciously gave us a three-year grace period that we will not be subject to the 232 tariffs,

01:09as long as, of course, we move the products here.

01:12Mr. President, I want to thank you for your leadership and, frankly, for your friendship.

01:18Albert, thank you very much. Great job. Great job.

01:22This is going to have a huge impact on bringing Medicaid costs down like nothing else.

01:27This is a critical step forward to our work and to improve healthcare and hardworking low-income Americans,

01:33especially low-income Americans, who will be helped so greatly.

01:36In addition, Pfizer has agreed to provide some of their most popular current medications to all consumers,

01:41at heavily discounted prices of anywhere between 50 and even 100 percent.

01:47And that's off. That's off the price.

01:50And in some cases, even more than that, these drugs will be available for direct purchase online

01:55at a website operated by the federal government.

01:58We're also announcing that, moving forward, all new medications introduced by Pfizer to the American market

02:04will be sold at the reduced most favored nation costs.

02:08So we'll be paying essentially what other countries are paying, who have been much lower, much, much lower for many, many years.

02:16I'm curious, where are the other companies other than Pfizer? Are you expecting them to come later?

02:21They're all there. They're all with us. And I was honored to have Albert be the first.

02:26He's done a fantastic job with, as you know, with the COVID. He did a fantastic job with a lot of things.

02:32He's a leader. And Pfizer is right at the top. You know, it's there.

02:37Eli Lilly has been fantastic also, your friend, my friend.

02:41And they're all coming in over the next week. We're making deals with all of them.

02:46And I said, if we don't make a deal, then we're going to tariff them an extra five, six, seven, eight percent,

02:51whatever the difference is, and we'll take it that way.

02:53So we took away the advantage by the fact that we have tariffs.

02:58We took away the advantage that they would have of just saying no, and we couldn't do anything about it.

03:02If they do that, what we do is we put a tariff on them of an equivalent amount, and we take it that way.

03:08And nobody wants to play that game.

03:09Americans should not be gouged paying 300 or 400 or 1,000 percent more than people in other countries.

03:17The exact same drug, many times manufactured by this in the same factory in New Jersey,

03:24and sold in Great Britain for one-tenth the price that it's being sold for a year.

03:28Even all of the negotiators here and all the people on HHS and at the White House team,

03:34all we could see was all the reasons that this couldn't happen.

03:39Everybody had tried. Nobody could make it happen.

03:43And it was President Trump alone who, with his doggedness, his persistence, his insistence,

03:51he saw this clearly in a way that none of us, in its most simplest terms,

03:56why are we spending more on this country than any other country?

04:00Why are we spending 75 percent of the revenues that come to the pharmaceutical industry?

04:06We're doing all the research, and everybody else is riding on our slipstream.

04:11Mr. President, thank you.

04:12Thank you very much.

04:13Thank you very much.

04:14Thank you very much.

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