Trump sends letters to pharmaceutical CEOs demanding drug price relief

President Donald Trump says Americans are paying too much for prescription medications, and he is demanding change. 

He sent 17 letters to pharmaceutical company CEOs Thursday, saying he will only accept a commitment that provides immediate relief from “vastly inflated drug prices.”

The president wants other rich countries to help shoulder the cost of research and development of brand-name medications that could help lower the price of those drugs. 

Pill bottles at a Walgreens (Getty Images)

“The days of foreign countries freeriding off of the United States of America came to an end the moment President Trump took office,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told FOX Business exclusively.

“Americans are just 5% of the world’s population but fund 75% of pharmaceutical companies’ profits, all because Americans are charged several times more for the same exact drugs as people in other wealthy countries. 

“President Trump pledged to lower drug prices for everyday Americans, and the administration is taking historic action to ensure that drug companies make wealthy countries pay their fair share instead of continuing to rip the American people off.” 

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An AstraZeneca building (iStock)

Speaking exclusively to FOX Business in a recent interview, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot, said he agreed with Trump. 

“For many years, the U.S. has been covering the cost of R&D in our industry. And it’s very important because, of course, this medicine saves lives,” Soriot said. “American patients benefit first before anybody else in the world. This industry creates a lot of good jobs. So, America gets benefits from this.

“But, at some point, the cost for this R&D has to be fairly shared across rich countries. I’m talking about rich countries, like in Europe or Japan, that have enough GDP to fund those. So, I totally support the idea that there has to be some price equalization that maybe should be GDP-adjusted between countries.” 

The pharma giant, whose top drugs treat diabetes and cancer among other illnesses, recently announced an investment of $50 billion over the next five years in the United States. 

ASTRAZENECA TO INVEST $50B IN U.S.

A CVS Pharmacy counter (Jeffrey Greenberg/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images / Getty Images)

The Trump administration plans to use authority under the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office and the Commerce Department to monitor the progress of rebalancing the price of medications. White House officials hope this will be a cooperative effort with pharmaceutical companies and likened it to extending a hand to help other countries share the cost burden for medications. 

Those officials prefer to change the cost structure for prescription medications through a voluntary process but say the administration is happy to force it through a mandatory regulatory process. 

Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Merck, Gilead and Amgen are among the companies who received the letters in which the President lays out four areas where pharmaceutical companies can make changes that would lower prices:

1. To extend the most favored nation pricing to Medicaid
2. Guaranteeing most favored nation pricing to newly launched medications
3. Return increased revenues from abroad from the rebalancing to American patients
4. Provide direct-to-consumer or direct-to-business distributions to eliminate the middle man for cost savings

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The president set a Sept. 29 deadline for repricing or his team stands ready to assist, he said.

FOX Business’ Suzanne O’Halloran contributed to this report.