Pfizer CEO Attending $25M Trump's Fundraiser

The White House's letters to 17 drug companies, including AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi, asked for commitments within 60 days to sell drugs for Medicaid patients and all new drugs at "most favored nation" rates. The president posted images of the letters to Truth Social.

Mr. Trump signed an executive order in May telling federal officials to draw up "most favored nation" regulations unless pharmaceutical companies made progress toward cutting prices. This week's letters — which were addressed to Bourla and the other CEOs — accused the drugmakers of promising "more of the same" since then.

The high cost of prescription drugs has vexed both parties for decades. Proposals to tie drug prices for U.S. patients to the typically much-lower rates charged in other developed countries have floated around for years, but the idea has faced some legal pushback.

Meanwhile, drugmakers argue price caps could discourage innovation by making it harder to pay for research and development for new drugs. The industry also argues that Americans tend to have access to more groundbreaking drugs than residents of foreign countries with stricter price regulations — and says high drug prices are just one part of a broader trend of higher healthcare spending in the U.S.

Bourla has engaged with Mr. Trump in the past. Pfizer was one of the drugmakers that was picked to rapidly develop COVID-19 vaccines in the first Trump administration's "Operation Warp Speed." And two weeks before Mr. Trump's second inauguration, Bourla and other Pfizer executives traveled to Mar-A-Lago for meetings, the Financial Times has previously reported.