Trump threatens NHS with higher drug prices

Telegraph

3 days ago

Donald Trump is pressuring the world's biggest drug makers to raise prices outside of the US in a threat to the NHS.
The US president has written to pharmaceutical companies including Britain's GSK and AstraZeneca to demand they lower prices for Americans, suggesting they should pay for it by charging higher fees abroad.
It raises the threat of higher costs for the NHS, which is one of the biggest buyers of pharmaceuticals in the world.
In the letters sent to the bosses of 17 pharmaceutical companies, Mr Trump demanded that they 'negotiate harder with foreign freeloading nations' and said that 'increased revenues abroad must be repatriated to lower drug prices for American patients and taxpayers'.
He also demanded a 'binding commitment' to these goals and declared that 'other nations have been freeloading on US innovation for too long'.
Mr Trump made clear that he would use tariffs to push through higher prices if countries resisted. The White House said the president was prepared to use 'trade policy to support manufacturers in raising prices internationally provided that increased revenues abroad are reinvested directly into lowering prices for American patients and taxpayers.'
Drug companies have been set a 60-day deadline to 'step up' and meet the president's demands.
He has also called for a commitment that companies 'will not offer other developed nations better prices for new drugs than prices offered in the United States.'
Trung Huynh, the head of pharma analysis at UBS, said it was clear Mr Trump wanted companies to charge higher prices in the UK and Europe.
Alex Schriver of US drug industry body PhRMA said: 'To reduce price differentials with other countries, policymakers should rein in health care middlemen driving up costs for Americans and get foreign countries to pay their fair share for innovative medicines.'
Mr Trump has already targeted NHS drug prices as part of his tariff policy. Last month the Telegraph reported that the White House expected the NHS to pay higher prices for American drugs in an attempt to boost the interests of US corporates.
Documents released after the US-UK trade agreement was signed earlier this year said the NHS would review drug pricing to take into account the 'concerns of the president'.
Thursday's letter was sent to drug companies including Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer and Sanofi.
Share prices slumped after Mr Trump published his letters on his Truth Social account. AstraZeneca and GSK both fell by more than 4pc, while Pfizer was down by more than 2pc.
Mr Trump has long expressed rage about the fact that drug companies make between half and 70pc of their profits in the US despite the country accounting for only a fifth of global sales.
Drug prices outside of the US can be as little as 30pc of what Americans pay. Profits from the US are used to fund drug research and development that the rest of the world benefits from.
Mr Trump has claimed that US citizens effectively pay for foreign healthcare systems through higher drug prices.
He said in 2020: 'In case after case, our citizens pay massively higher prices than other nations pay for the same exact pill, from the same factory, effectively subsidising 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.'