Nine more drugmakers meet Trump on pricing plans

Nine more pharmaceutical companies on Friday committed to President Trump's "most favored nation" drug pricing policy and agreed to lower U.S. prices for some of their products.

Why it matters: The deals with Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, Genentech, Bristol Myers Squibb, Amgen, Novartis, Gilead and Boehringer Ingelheim continue the administration's push to put U.S. drug prices in line with the lowest price paid in selected other developed countries.

• Trump also said Friday he plans to call a meeting soon with health insurance companies to "see if they get their prices down."

The big picture: The drugmakers that committed on Friday were among the the 17 Trump sent letters to last summer, demanding they commit to his pricing regime and lower their prices in the U.S.

• Trump has also demanded that other countries pay more for pharmaceuticals or face steep tariffs.
• "If we didn't have the use of tariffs, we would never be able to do this," Trump said Friday.

State of play: The companies have agreed to offer all drugs to Medicaid at most favored nation pricing. They'll also list their most popular drugs at a discount on the government's soon-to-be-launched TrumpRx for direct-to-consumer purchasing, Trump said.

• The companies will collectively invest more than $150 billion in domestic drug manufacturing. They've also committed to donating some pharmaceutical ingredients to the U.S.'s national stockpile of medications.
• Bristol Myers Squibb said that it will offer its blood thinner Eliquis to Medicaid for free.

Reality check: Patents have already expired for some of the drugs that will be offered at a lower price on TrumpRx, including Sanofi's blood thinner Plavix and GSK's inhaler Advair — meaning lower-cost generic versions are already available to patients.

Flash back: The administration this fall announced separate pricing deals with Pfizer, AstraZeneca, EMD Serono, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.

• Those deals included Medicaid price concessions and agreements to launch future drugs in the U.S. at prices pegged to what's paid abroad.

• The companies have also committed to participating in TrumpRx, which is due to launch in January. Few details on actual terms have been released.

Trump said three additional pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson, have also struck deals with the administration that will be announced next week, rounding out the list of companies that received letters from the president earlier this year.

What they're saying: Pharmaceutical company executives praised Trump and the administration during remarks at the White House.

• "For too long, global pricing imbalances have shifted the financial burden of groundbreaking research and development onto the U.S. health care system and ultimately, American patients," Merck CEO Robert Davis said in a statement.

Democrats in Congress this week questioned companies on details of the deals and whether they would lower prices for consumers.

• Among the details they sought were how prices for newly launched drugs be set, the length of the agreements and the specific drugs covered.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

Go deeper: The pharmaceutical industry isn't yet in the clear