WASHINGTON — The White House announced that President Donald Trump's deals with pharmaceutical companies to lower U.S. prescription drug prices to levels charged in other affluent nations could save $529 billion over the next decade. The projection, produced by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, covers agreements with 17 leading pharmaceutical companies under a "most favored nation" pricing policy.

Federal and state governments could save a combined $64.3 billion on Medicaid over the next 10 years under the policy, according to the analysis. One model in the analysis projected possible savings of as much as $733 billion over the same period. Americans spent $467 billion on prescription drugs in 2024, according to the most recent government data available.

The analysis is premised on the idea that foreign countries would also pay more for their prescription drugs, diversifying drugmakers' revenue sources and preserving their ability to innovate with new treatments. Trump and the Department of Health and Human Services described the deals as transformative and urged Congress to codify their principles into law.

"Now you have the lowest drug prices anywhere in the world. And that alone should win us the midterms," Trump said.

Few details of the agreements have been made public. The White House said it has not released the text because the documents include highly sensitive data that could move financial markets. The administration said details that did not include proprietary information or trade secrets would be shared.

In April, Senator Ron Wyden and 17 Senate Democrats proposed a measure requiring the administration to disclose the terms of the agreements signed by pharmaceutical companies. "If these deals are so great, why is the Trump administration afraid of showing them to the public?" Wyden said.

Also in April, staff working for Senator Bernie Sanders released an analysis finding that the combined profits of 15 pharmaceutical companies that agreed to the pricing plan jumped 66% over the past year to $177 billion. The Trump administration said that critique is flawed because it is based on list prices rather than the actual prices paid by patients.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in October 2024 that a plan similar to the one Trump adopted could reduce prescription drug prices by more than 5%, though the decrease "would probably diminish over time as manufacturers adjusted to the new policy by altering prices or distribution of drugs in other countries," according to the CBO. The tax cuts signed by Trump last year exempted or delayed many of the most expensive drugs from price negotiations with Medicare.