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President Donald Trump has sent letters to the leaders of 17 major pharmaceutical companies, urging them to take immediate steps to reduce prescription drug costs for Americans, the White House said Thursday.
The letters, copies of which were posted on Trump’s Truth Social account, were addressed to companies including Eli Lilly, Sanofi, Regeneron, Merck & Co., Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. The message calls on the firms to adopt what the administration described as “most favored nation” pricing, ensuring that Medicaid pays no more than the lowest price charged in other developed countries.
“In case after case, our citizens pay massively higher prices than other nations pay for the same exact pill, from the same factory, effectively subsidizing socialism aboard [abroad] with skyrocketing prices at home. So we would spend tremendous amounts of money in order to provide inexpensive drugs to another country. And when I say the price is different, you can see some examples where the price is beyond anything — four times, five times different,” Trump said in a White House fact sheet.
Trump also asked the companies to apply that pricing standard to newly developed medications and to redirect excess overseas revenue back to American patients and taxpayers. The letters did not outline specific enforcement mechanisms or policy proposals tied to those requests.
The companies have been given a deadline of Sept. 29 to respond with binding commitments.
“According to recent data, the prices that Americans have been paying for brand name drugs are more than three times the price other similarly developed nations pay,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
She said the Trump administration intends to “deploy every tool in our arsenal” to end what she described as “abusive drug pricing practices.”
The letters mark the latest move in Trump’s broader effort to confront high prescription costs, a major concern for voters across party lines. While drug pricing reform was a central part of Trump’s first-term policy platform, many of the initiatives faced legal and industry challenges before being fully implemented.
It remains unclear how the companies will respond or whether any have signaled willingness to meet the administration’s demands.