Novartis is looking for ways to reduce American prices, admitting the Americans to pay for a large part of the innovations’

Vasant Narasimhan told the Swiss daily Neue Zurcher Zeitung (NZZ) that his business “worked to eliminate the price gap between the United States and other industrialized countries”.

“We are working with the government and try to find constructive solutions so that the Americans pay less for their drugs,” he told Switzerland Daily.

Although pharmaceutical products have been spared so far from the rates that Washington stuck on his business partners, US President Donald Trump threatened to hit the entire sector with prices up to 250% if drug prices do not drop.

Narasimhan suggested that it was logical to reduce American prices.

“It is a fact that American patients pay for a large part of innovations,” he recognized at the NZZ, insisting that “countries outside the United States will have to contribute a larger part in the future”.

Pharmaceutical companies are under massive pressure from the Trump administration to move production in the United States.

Novartis already announced in April that it planned to invest $ 23 billion in the United States over five years.

The objective was “to make the most important products for the American market locally,” he said, adding that he “would probably take three to four years to get there.”

But he estimated that the company could “make significant changes over the next two years”, including the realization of part of the final filling and packaging in the United States.

These efforts, he said, should allow Novartis to resist the situation if pharmaceutical products are affected by the same prices as Washington has already slapped other exports from European countries where it has most of its production.

Washington currently taxes EU imports at 15% and from Switzerland at 39%.

The rapid expansion of the United States of Novartis “should allow us to fully alleviate the prices,” said Narasimhan.

The company was “more concerned about prices for the entire industry,” he admitted.

Narasimhan said that he was not worried about finding enough workers for new American factories in Novartis, providing that massive pharmaceutical investment commitments would stimulate the American education system to reveal more specialists.

He added that many pharmaceutical factory processes were “fully automated”.

“We only need a total of 1,000 to 1,500 additional workers to operate our new factories planned in the United States,” he said.

“It’s manageable.”

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