US President Donald Trump has called on the executives of American pharmaceutical companies to manufacture more drugs and reduce prices, also vowing to expedite approval of new medicines and ease regulations.
In a meeting with the US drug company executives at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said the government was paying “astronomical” prices for medicines in its health care-related programs for the poor, the disabled and the elderly.
“You folks have done a tremendous job but we have to get prices down,” the US president said. “US drug companies have produced extraordinary results for our country, but the pricing has been astronomical for our country.”
He also promised to make the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of new drugs “much faster,” adding that, “We’re going to be cutting regulation at a level nobody’s ever seen before.”
During the Tuesday meeting, the new US president also censured what he called “price-fixing” in the federal…