(Washington) Donald Trump said Friday that he was going to ask the bosses of private health insurance in the United States to lower their prices, two weeks before a significant increase in these costs for millions of Americans.
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The Republican president raised this idea when announcing an agreement between his government and nine pharmaceutical companies to lower the prices of drugs in the United States, where they are among the highest in the world.
“It’s just an idea I have,” Donald Trump said from the White House. “I’m sure if I had a meeting with the insurance companies, the ones involved in health care costs, I’d be willing to bet they would reduce their prices. »
The majority of Americans benefit from health insurance, operated by private companies, through their employer.
“I’m going to call these insurance companies that are making so much money, and they need to make less, a lot less” money, Donald Trump said.
At the end of December, financial aid expires which today allows more than 20 million Americans to afford health coverage via the public “Obamacare” program. A person paying the average annual cost of $888 in 2025 would have to pay $1,906 in 2026, according to an estimate from the KFF think tank.
And this while Americans already face one of the most expensive health systems in the world, spending on average more than double than in other rich countries, according to OECD figures.
Donald Trump’s announcement also comes at a time when his party seems to be taking stock of the population’s fears about the rising cost of living and is worried about the consequences this could have for the mid-term legislative elections at the end of 2026.
The Republican billionaire spoke from the White House to announce an agreement with nine companies to reduce drug costs, based on what has already been done with the giants Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Novo Nordisk.
The companies that joined this agreement on Friday are Sanofi, Merck, Novartis, Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK, Amgen, Gilead Sciences, Boehringer Ingelheim and Genentech, for a total of 14.
According to a study by the Rand Corporation, Americans pay on average 2.5 times more for prescription drugs than the French, for example, a gap that Donald Trump has pledged to reduce.
