America's Talking - Administration strikes deal with Pfizer to reduce drug costs

Episode Date: October 5, 2025

(The Center Square) – The results of a May executive order aiming to reform drug pricing are beginning to materialize, per an administration announcement Tuesday. Major pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer has agreed to slash prices on many of its drugs in the U.S. after months of negotiations with the administration. Both those involved in the discussions and observers were uncertain how they would accomplish the president’s directive.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxRead more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_94a8607c-7183-49ca-bb55-7e072c680791.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello again. This is America's Talking. I'm Alan Wooten with the Center Square, East Coast Managing Editor. And today we are talking about news out of the White House with Pfizer and President Trump and Mehmet Oz. With us today to talk about her story is Morgan Sweeney, one of our White House reporters. Morgan, what's the story here? What happened earlier this week? Yeah, so Pfizer and the Trump administration together made an announcement that they've reached a deal. It's pursuant to an executive order that the president signed in May calling for pharmaceutical companies to offer what's called most favored nation pricing to the U.S. And what that means is pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, according to the administration, they often charge the U.S. much more for many of their drugs. than other companies that are comparably wealthy or comparably like peer countries economically. And so the president wanted to see an end put to that. And he said, oh, you know, other countries are freeloading on the back of, you know, what Americans are paying for these drugs.

And we fund so much research and innovation over here. and other countries are kind of benefiting from that, but we're paying the bulk of the cost. And so it was kind of unclear what was going to come from this executive order. Nothing really happened for several months. And then this week they announced with Pfizer, like I said, that Pfizer has agreed to offer most favored nation pricing to Medicaid, which means that it is not going to sell its drugs in the U.S. for more than it sells them in these economic peer countries. So that was one aspect of the announcement. And then another part of it was that the government is working on a website

now called Trump RX, where it's going to offer direct-to-consumer sales for drugs. Okay. And, you know, if you look around, there's all kinds of ways that they measure the big pharma companies, and whether it's research and development or their bottom line or the value, Pfizer is, they're either going to be top or top three, top five. I mean, just about every measurement. So they are a major player. You mentioned that, you know, the president gave the order what he wanted to have happen back in the spring. Things just didn't go. Nothing happened.

But I believe your story mentioned that both sides have the agreement. I mean, Pfizer is on board with this fully. Yeah. And the administration is clearly very excited. about it. And they've made it sound like a huge, huge deal. And it's definitely a step in the right direction. I've talked to some people in the industry, and they say that. However, because it is, because Pfizer is offering this pricing to Medicaid, and people who have, people who have, are on Medicaid already pay very little or even nothing sometimes for their drugs,

it's likely that the actual consumer may not really notice a difference. But the good thing is that there is this emphasis on transparency and there's kind of been a push for that, really in government and health care over the past few years, kind of in the first Trump administration, they took some steps. And then even the Biden administration pushed it a little further. And now this is just kind of another step in that direction. So the hope is ultimately that it just kind of fosters transparency more and, you know, continues to push the ball forward in that area because it's a very opaque industry. So. Morgan's story is at the center square.com. And Morgan, one other question. So Pfizer's on board. What about the other big players, Johnson and Johnson? What are your sources telling you as far as what is there a domino effect that is likely to happen or not? Yeah. So it's thought that some of these other companies are going to come on board pretty quickly here. But they haven't made any official announcements. But that's that's the expectation.

So very good Morgan Swinney part of the White House reporting team for the center square her story is at the center square.com