Pharma presses for higher drug prices in Europe, including Switzerland

Drugmakers are still pressing Europe to raise medicine prices, even as the reach of Donald Trump’s US pricing plan appears narrower than first expected. The campaign matters in Switzerland, where industry groups have warned that prices could shape whether new medicines arrive promptly or at all. Companies argue that lower prices in countries used as US benchmarks could put pressure on launches and research funding. They continue to call for higher prices and wider reforms across Europe, including in Switzerland. For governments, the choice is difficult: higher medicine bills would add to healthcare costs, while holding prices down could worsen access to treatments. The debate is now unfolding alongside a US programme whose exemptions and limited reach have become clearer. That shift has eased some of the initial uncertainty, but it has not ended the industry’s push for changes in European pricing.

Trump’s Most-Favoured Nation policy began with a stark price gap: US patients pay three to four times as much for brand-name drugs as patients in other wealthy countries. In May 2025, the US president issued an executive order calling for American prices to align with those paid in peer countries. Pharmaceutical companies warned that matching lower prices could cut funding for research into new medicines. The industry’s argument carries weight in a market that accounts for at least half the revenue of most large drugmakers, despite representing less than 5% of the world’s population. The US National Institutes of Health is also the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research. Trump argued that other wealthy countries should pay what he viewed as their fair share of innovation. Drug companies and trade groups have echoed that case as they press European governments to reconsider prices and policy.

The US programme has narrowed through exemptions and conditions, reducing the number of companies directly exposed to its mandatory pricing rules. Twenty-six drugmakers have signed confidential deals with the US government, pledging to adopt prices aligned with other countries in return for immunity from tariffs that could reach 100%. A voluntary Medicaid pilot, GENEROUS, offers one route out of the mandatory Medicare pilot, GLOBE: companies participating in GENEROUS are exempt from GLOBE. Medicaid already receives the lowest prices among US payers. Under rules announced on September 30, only four unnamed companies are subject to GLOBE. The arrangement helps explain why the policy is expected to have less impact than initially anticipated. It has not, however, stopped companies from using the threat of US price controls to argue that European countries should pay more for medicines.