The Trump administration last year came up with a plan to combat high drug prices —making European governments pay more.
Meanwhile, drug approvals in Europe have held steady over that time period. There has been a 27% drop in new drug releases across European countries over the last 17 months, compared with the same period before President Trump announced the plan, according to new data from market-research firm GlobalData.
President Trump said companies would also sell newly launched drugs and medicines on the TrumpRx website at a lower price. The stated goal was to protect Americans from paying high prices and subsidizing the rest of the world’s purchases of medicines at cheaper prices. Frank Vandenbroucke, Belgium’s deputy prime minister and minister of health and social affairs, in October co-wrote an article that argued for Europe to fight back against the deals and launch a trade investigation against the U.S.
To avoid tariffs, more than 20 drugmakers reached deals with the administration agreeing to not charge much more in the U.S. than they do in a basket of other nations. The drug, named Brinsupri, lists for $88,000 a year in the U.S. For its drug Repatha, Amgen did offer a 60% discount off the roughly $6,900-a-year price tag for consumers on that site.
Because of the U.S. policy, insmed Chief Executive William Lewis said last year that the company was delaying European launches of its chronic-lung-condition drug.
“You have companies saying, ‘Well maybe I won’t enter the market there because it’s just going to be used against me in the United States,’” said Ipsita Smolinski, director of health-policy research firm Capitol Street. Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said last month that the company is considering launching new drugs just in Europe’s private market—rather than through government health programs—to avoid agreeing to prices in Europe that could lower the bar for what they can charge in the U.S. Earlier this year, the European Union’s health commissioner probed the policy’s impact but said it was too early to tell.
