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No drug price pledges by Pfizer, others in talks with US government, Pfizer CEO says
By Michael Erman - 6/9/2025
By Michael Erman
(Reuters) -Pfizer and other drug companies have met with the Trump administration to discuss lowering U.S. drug prices but no commitments have been made, Chief Executive Albert Bourla said on Monday.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order last month directing drugmakers to lower the prices of their medicines to align with what other countries pay.
According to the order, the administration was to set "Most Favored Nation" price targets within 30 days. The Department of Health and Human Services has said it expects drugmakers in the U.S. to set prices for their products at the lowest price paid by other high-income countries.
"I don't know what we will hear in 30 days," Bourla said, speaking at Goldman Sachs' Global Healthcare Conference.
"The administration already started series of meetings with companies. ... The meetings were cordial, but they were not digging into the substance," he said, adding that they focused on high-level ideas.
Bourla is also chairman of industry lobby group PhRMA. A spokesperson for the group was not immediately available for comment, but previously said PhRMA was not privy to conversations its member companies were having with the administration on drug prices.
It is unclear what mechanism the U.S. government will use to lower drug prices, and analysts and legal experts have said the policy will be difficult to implement.
"HHS is demanding that pharmaceutical companies end their obstruction and come to the table - just as they already do with nearly every other economically comparable nation - to negotiate fair, transparent pricing for Americans," an HHS spokesperson said in an email.
The spokesperson said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would establish a mechanism through which American patients can buy their drugs directly from manufacturers who sell to Americans at a "Most-Favored-Nation" price.
Bourla also said he was hopeful that, given U.S. pressure on European countries to pay more, prices there could increase. He said that if the U.S. resorts to price controls, Pfizer could consider not making drugs available for government reimbursement in some countries if prices don't increase there.
"I don't think we will remove our products from the markets there - we will just remove them from reimbursement," Bourla said. "We will leave them in open market."
(Reporting by Michael Erman in New York, and Bhanvi Satija and Mariam Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Mark Potter and Bernadette Baum)