President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to call on health insurance companies to meet with him as part of an effort to reduce healthcare costs for millions of Americans.
"I'll bet you if I called a meeting of the insurance companies, the companies that are involved with healthcare costs, I would be willing to bet that they would reduce their prices very, very substantially," Trump said at the White House after announcing a deal with nine drugmakers to lower the cost of pharmaceuticals.
Trump's remarks aired live on Newsmax and the Newsmax2 free online streaming platform.
"We could have fair healthcare in the country," he said. "Now, my initial thought, and this is what I want to do as of right now, this is the alternative, is that all of the billions and billions, ultimately trillions and trillions of dollars that's paid to these companies, we're going to pay directly to the people.
"But there's another way of doing it. And that's getting the insurance companies to ease up and to cut their pricing way, way down and stay part of the system."
Trump said the meeting could take place in Florida next week or at the White House in the first week of the new year.
"I'm going to call a meeting of the insurance companies. I'm going to see if they get their prices down, to put it very bluntly. And I think that is a very big statement," he said.
A total of 14 pharmaceutical companies have reached deals with the Trump administration in the wake of tariff threats. The nine that reached agreements Friday are Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis, and Sanofi.
Three of the 17 companies initially targeted by the Trump administration — AbbVie, Johnson & Johnson, and Regeneron — have yet to appear publicly with the president regarding price cuts, but officials said those companies are expected to make their own announcements soon, The Washington Post reported.
"What happened here is the biggest statement of all, because nobody thought a thing like this was possible," Trump said.
"And I think based on that, I won't even take questions today because there's no way I can take questions that are anywhere comparable to what you just witnessed. You just witnessed drug prices that will go down at levels never thought even possible.
"And I think that the second-biggest part of this meeting is going to be the fact that I'm going to call in the insurance companies that are making so much money, and they have to make less, a lot less, and maybe we can have reasonable healthcare without having to cut them out and let it all go awry."
Insurers this year pushed back against Congress and the Trump administration over the impact of Medicaid cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, according to The Hill.
The industry has also lobbied heavily to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which expire at the end of the year.
Democrats have focused on potential premium increases, even though they created the enhanced subsidies during the pandemic and extended them in 2022. They made the issue a centerpiece of their demands during the six-week government shutdown earlier this fall.
Trump has called on Republicans to send money directly to Americans instead of providing tax credits to insurers, accusing Democrats of being in the pocket of the health insurance industry.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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