The White House says the federal government has locked in agreements with drug manufacturers covering nearly all of the brand-name medications Americans buy, a milestone that has been building for more than a year under a single presidential order aimed at drug prices. As of August 31, 2026, the administration had reached 26 deals with pharmaceutical manufacturers, covering nearly 90% of the branded drug market, according to a fact sheet the White House published September 10, 2026. That is more than double the count from the start of the year.
26 Deals, Nearly 90% of the Branded Drug Market
The core figure comes straight from the administration’s own accounting: 26 signed agreements with pharmaceutical manufacturers as of the end of August, covering close to 90% of the branded prescription drugs sold in the United States. Branded drugs are the medications still under patent, without a generic competitor on the market, and they tend to carry the highest list prices of anything in a pharmacy — the drugs patients on Medicare Part D and private insurance most often cite when a prescription bill jumps unexpectedly. The fact sheet does not publish a list of which companies or drugs are covered, or spell out the specific price changes tied to each deal — it reports the count and the market-coverage share, not a dollar figure for what any one household saves at the pharmacy counter.
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The Newest Nine Deals Name the Companies and the Conditions
The August 31 fact sheet that supplies the 26-deal count also names the nine manufacturers that most recently joined: Alcon, Astellas Pharma, BeOne Medicines, BridgeBio, CSL, Kyowa Kirin, Sun Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals and UCB. Their products treat hemophilia, Parkinson’s disease, macular degeneration, glaucoma, liver disease, skin conditions and several forms of cancer, according to the White House. The agreements guarantee every state Medicaid program access to the most-favored-nation price on those nine companies’ products, and each company separately committed to a combined $19.6 billion in near-term U.S. manufacturing investment. Several are also contributing raw pharmaceutical ingredients to a federal stockpile called the Strategic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Reserve — UCB is donating 163 tons of the anticonvulsant levetiracetam and Teva is donating 45 metric tons of the antibiotic metronidazole, among other contributions — a supply-chain commitment that is separate from the pricing deal itself.
The Deals Trace Back to a May 2025 Most-Favored-Nation Order
The count has grown steadily since President Trump signed an executive order on May 12, 2025 directing the administration to bring U.S. prescription drug prices in line with what similar developed nations pay, an approach often called “most-favored-nation” pricing. By mid-January 2026, the administration counted 16 such deals; by the end of August 2026, that had risen to 26, covering nearly 90% of the branded drug market rather than a scattering of individual products. Neither fact sheet names a target date for reaching full market coverage.
A Separate $50 Billion Is Flowing to Rural Hospitals
The same broader policy push includes the Rural Health Transformation Program, a $50 billion fund created under the Working Families Tax Cuts Act and paid out at $10 billion a year from 2026 through 2030. CMS announced funding awards to all 50 states on December 29, 2025, with first-year 2026 awards averaging $200 million per state and ranging from $147 million to $281 million, half distributed equally across states and half based on rural population and need. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the funding is meant to put “local hospitals, clinics, and health workers in control of their communities’ healthcare,” while CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz framed it as states “stepping forward with bold, creative plans to expand rural access, strengthen their workforces, modernize care.” It is a separate program from the drug-pricing deals, but the administration presents both as part of the same effort to lower healthcare costs for households — this time by supporting the hospitals and clinics rural patients depend on rather than the price of a prescription.
Up to 10 Million Obamacare Enrollees Get Expanded HSA Access
The September 10 fact sheet also credits the Working Families Tax Cuts Act with expanding health savings account access to up to 10 million people enrolled in Obamacare plans, alongside what the administration describes as stronger enforcement against exchange fraud. A health savings account lets someone set aside pre-tax money for medical costs, including prescriptions, and carry the balance forward year to year — a different mechanism from the drug-pricing deals, but one the White House packages together with them as part of the same cost-of-care message.
Where the Savings Actually Reach a Household: TrumpRx Versus Medicaid
The mechanism behind each deal decides whether it reaches an individual patient or a state budget. Most of the 26 agreements guarantee state Medicaid programs — not individual patients directly — access to the most-favored-nation price, a saving that shows up in a state’s Medicaid spending rather than in a co-pay at the counter. The one channel built to reach a patient’s own wallet directly is TrumpRx.gov, the federal direct-to-consumer site the administration launched February 5, 2026. The White House says patients have saved more than $700 million through TrumpRx since that launch, and that GLP-1 weight-loss drugs became available to seniors without other coverage for $50 a month starting in July 2026, with more than 500,000 seniors saving a combined $216 million in the program’s first two months. A separate White House analysis published in May 2026, based on the 17 manufacturer deals in place at that time, estimated that GLP-1 users buying without insurance through TrumpRx would save roughly $3,000 a year and that couples pursuing in-vitro fertilization could save more than $6,000 — concrete, direct-to-consumer figures that are a different thing from the 26-deal, market-coverage count in the headline.
None of these figures — the 26 deals, the $50 billion rural health program, or the HSA expansion — come with an itemized breakdown of what a specific household saves on a specific prescription or hospital bill. What the administration has published and stands behind as of this September fact sheet is the count of signed drug-pricing agreements and the market share they cover, a number worth watching as the remaining slice of the branded drug market either gets folded into a deal or stays outside one.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
