By Steve Holland and Michael Erman
WASHINGTON, Aug 31 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump announced a new round of drug-pricing agreements with international pharmaceutical companies and some smaller biotechs on Monday, part of a push to make healthcare more affordable for Americans.
Deals were signed with companies including Astellas, BeOne Medicines, CSL, BridgeBio, Sun Pharmaceutical, and UCB SA, Trump said in an Oval Office event with executives of the companies.
Israel's Teva, which also attended
the event, said in a press release it was still in discussions with the administration on a potential agreement.
These companies have offered drugs to state Medicaid programs at most-favored-nation prices, Trump said, describing this as "a tremendous discount, which should bring down the cost of your medical care by tremendous amounts."
It is not clear how many drugs the deals cover or at what discounts, leaving the savings for the government or patients unknown. The White House did not release details of the agreements and companies in separate press releases described some terms as private. The administration and some of the companies said there would also be future savings on innovative drugs, and agreements to manufacture more products in the U.S.
ADDS TO EARLIER DEALS
U.S. consumers currently pay by far the most for prescription medicines, often nearly three times more than in other developed nations, and Trump has been pressuring drugmakers to lower their prices to what patients pay elsewhere.
The deals follow those the administration struck with 17 of the world's largest drugmakers, including Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Novo Nordisk starting last year.
Those companies agreed to cut some prices for federal health programs and sell some medicines directly to patients through a Trump-branded website, in return for tariff relief. It was not clear if there were any TrumpRx arrangements with the smaller companies.
The biggest savings from the earlier deals have come from weight-loss drugs. Novo and Lilly agreed to price cuts in return for their medicines being made more available through the Medicare program.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz on Monday said 600,000 seniors had sought prescriptions through a new temporary pilot, which began July 1.
Beyond weight-loss drugs, critics like consumer watchdog Public Citizen have been skeptical about how much price relief Americans are really receiving from the White House agreements.
Medicaid already gets steep discounts from drugmakers under existing law, and most people covered by the program pay little out of pocket for prescriptions.
"The new deals are a distraction from the administration's failed plan to lower U.S. drug prices to the levels paid in other wealthy countries," said Peter Maybarduk, Access to Medicines director for the consumer advocacy group, in a statement.
SMALL DRUGMAKERS SLOW TO SIGN ON
Smaller and mid-sized drugmakers had been slow to sign onto drug-pricing deals, Reuters has reported.
A Reuters report in June found that only Japan's Astellas had confirmed applying for the Medicaid pricing program by that point, with executives at companies such as Ionis Pharmaceuticals saying they saw little financial benefit in joining.
The White House has held several high-profile events with pharmaceutical executives this year to promote its efforts on healthcare costs, part of a broader push to highlight affordability before this year's midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.
The administration has said its broader drug pricing push, including the earlier deals with large pharmaceutical companies, could save $64.3 billion in federal and state spending over the next decade, but that number is speculative.
(Additional reporting by Kamal Choudhury and Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru and Yasmeen Abutaleb in Washington; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)
