Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., praised President Donald Trump's expanding agreements with major pharmaceutical companies to lower prescription drug prices, calling the effort "a fantastic development" that he said could save Americans "tens of billions of dollars."
Meuser's comments came in a Newsmax interview as the White House announced that nine additional drugmakers had agreed to participate in the administration's "most-favored-nation" pricing initiative, bringing the total to 14 companies.
Under the approach, the administration has sought to tie certain U.S. drug prices to the lowest prices paid by other wealthy countries.
"I've been an advocate, as has the president, for a long time, that our Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should be able to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies," Meuser told Tuesday's "Wake Up America."
The administration has described the new commitments as expanding price reductions beyond existing government programs and reaching consumers who pay cash or face high out-of-pocket costs.
The agreements include commitments to lower prices for some medicines and offer discounted purchases through a new direct-to-consumer platform the White House has said is expected to launch in January.
The program would create additional ways for patients to access discounted medications while keeping pharmacies central to distribution, according to Meuser.
"The manufacturers, certainly prescription drugs, you'll need to go to your pharmacist," he said, adding that prices would be "lower" under the framework he described as a negotiated, most-favored-nation threshold.
He also pointed to a new TrumpRx initiative as a key part of the administration's plan.
"So it's America First. It's access, it's lower pricing," Meuser said.
The White House has framed the effort as building on President Donald Trump's May 2025 executive order directing agencies to pursue most-favored-nation pricing and other steps intended to align certain U.S. prices more closely with prices paid abroad.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have said they were moving to implement the order.
The policy push lands alongside a separate, already underway federal effort to reduce costs through Medicare's drug price negotiation program created by the Inflation Reduction Act.
Under that law, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services negotiated "maximum fair prices" for an initial set of 10 Part D drugs, with those negotiated prices scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2026.
Consumer advocates and health policy groups have said the negotiated prices are expected to lower out-of-pocket costs for many Medicare beneficiaries next year.
Still, the impact of the Trump administration's new agreements might be difficult to predict quickly.
While the administration touted significant potential savings, some experts said the magnitude would depend on how the commitments are implemented and how broadly the discounts apply across markets.
Meuser emphasized speed and scale, saying Americans would soon "feel the impact" as the initiative moved from announcements to purchasing and pharmacy channels in early 2026.
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