President Donald Trump’s effort to bring U.S. prescription-drug prices closer to those paid overseas is already changing pharmaceutical companies’ behavior far beyond America.

Drugmakers are increasingly holding back applications for insurance reimbursement in Switzerland because lower Swiss prices could eventually be used as benchmarks under the administration’s most-favored-nation drug-pricing policy.

A survey released Thursday by Swiss pharmaceutical industry group Interpharma found that seven of 22 newly introduced innovative medicines between January 2025 and June 2026 were never submitted for inclusion on Switzerland’s mandatory health-insurance reimbursement list. Three additional medicines were not submitted for Swiss market approval at all. 

The reimbursement list matters because it determines whether Swiss compulsory health insurance will cover a drug and also helps establish the price paid in the country.

That is now becoming a strategic concern for manufacturers.

Trump’s most-favored-nation approach seeks to prevent Americans from paying substantially more for medicines than patients in other wealthy nations. Switzerland is among the markets that can be used as an international pricing reference. 

For drugmakers, that creates a new calculation.

Launching a medicine at a relatively low reimbursed price in Switzerland could potentially put pressure on the much larger and more profitable U.S. market. Companies therefore have an incentive to delay reimbursement, hold back a launch or seek a higher overseas price rather than risk creating a cheaper benchmark that could follow them back to America.

Interpharma said just 15 new medicines were submitted for Swiss reimbursement during the 18-month period, compared with an average of 24 during comparable periods between 2019 and 2025. 

The business consequence is one of the most important unintended effects emerging from international reference pricing.

A policy designed to lower American drug costs does not necessarily change only what Americans pay. It can also influence where pharmaceutical companies launch medicines, how quickly they seek reimbursement and what prices they demand from foreign governments.

That could leave countries accustomed to negotiating lower drug prices with less leverage.

The trend is not limited to Switzerland. Drugmakers have also delayed some European launches amid concern that lower prices there could undermine U.S. pricing under the administration’s international benchmarking push. 

For American consumers, the administration’s objective remains straightforward: use the enormous size of the U.S. pharmaceutical market to push domestic prices closer to the lowest prices paid by other developed countries.

But the early response from manufacturers suggests the policy may change the global pricing system itself.

Instead of simply lowering American prices to European levels, pharmaceutical companies may increasingly try to prevent European prices from falling far below American ones.

That means the next phase of the drug-price battle may not be fought only inside U.S. pharmacies and insurance companies.

It may be fought over which countries get new medicines first — and how much they will have to pay to get them.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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