As the time for premiums to double is imminent, Trump pressured health insurance giants to lower prices

The Zhitong Finance App learned that US President Donald Trump said that he will convene meetings with many US health insurance companies in the next few weeks to try to put pressure on these companies to reduce health insurance costs for Americans facing rising premiums after Obama's health care subsidies expire at the end of the year. As far as the Trump administration is concerned, the “cliff” of subsidies will directly touch the bills of tens of millions of voters and easily evolve into public opinion and election issues that are unfavorable to the administration during the cost-of-living sensitive period. Therefore, Trump uses “meetings and pressure” to seize narrative initiative, shape a “problem is being solved” attitude, strive to gain more trust from low- and middle-income voters, and further create momentum for the 2026 midterm elections.

“I want to call an insurance company for a meeting,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday local time. “To put it bluntly, I'll see if they can cut the price across the board.”

Trump said the meeting could take place next week, when he will be vacationing at Sea-Lake Estate in Florida; or in the first week of January after his return to Washington. He stressed that the idea came to him on the spot. At an important event, he heard executives from major pharmaceutical companies promised to donate drugs as part of an agreement to avoid the Trump administration's tariffs.

Following Trump's remarks, US health insurance industry leaders, such as UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UnitedHealth Group Inc.) The stock prices of major insurance companies such as Cigna Group (Cigna Group), and Humana Inc. (Humana Inc.) narrowed their gains sharply. Eventually, when the three major US stock indices rose sharply, the stock prices of these three major insurance leaders ended in a downward trend on Friday.

AHIP, an industry organization representing health insurance companies, said that premiums mainly reflect medical care costs, and that insurers' profit margins and administrative costs are regulated. “Health insurance programs in the US are doing their best to protect Americans from rising and rising health care costs,” AHIP CEO Mike Tuffin (Mike Tuffin) said in an email statement.

Trump said that although he still favors a plan that allows Americans to receive direct subsidies to buy insurance, an important agreement to reduce costs may help preserve the Obamacare deal and the actual results of this important health reform.

In the interview, he stressed that insurance companies “make too much money; they have to make less, much less.” He said, “Maybe we can implement reasonable health insurance measures without removing them from the list or leaving everything in chaos.”

As far as the Trump administration is concerned, instead of directly promoting large-scale fiscal renewal subsidies (high costs, large differences within the party), it is better to first send a strong signal to the industry to cushion the 2026 premium impact through “industry concessions/fee control promises”, thus saving time and space for subsequent legislation.

US congressmen left Washington earlier this week without announcing an extension of subsidies. By 2026, health insurance premiums for more than 20 million Americans will double or become more expensive on average, which may make it difficult for many low- and middle-income American voters who are already concerned about the cost of living expenses such as housing, groceries, and utilities to continue to bear the high insurance costs.

When congressional lawmakers return to the US Capitol Hill next month, they will have less than two weeks to resolve this premium issue, which is critical for low- and middle-income voters, before open registration ends on January 15. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, has also kept a close eye on the issue of Obamacare's soaring premiums for six months, making it the core of their voters' demands, and placed it at the center of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats during the six-week government shutdown this fall.

Needless to say, this kind of public pressure from the Trump administration will raise uncertainty about the future profit margins and rate paths of US insurance companies, so the short-term valuation of the sector is negative — this is why the stock prices of US health insurance giants collectively fell after Trump made remarks about lowering premiums, while strengthening the Trump administration's good policy image of striving to “control health care costs.”

Also, on Friday EST, US President Trump announced that he had reached drug price reduction agreements with nine pharmaceutical giants. Pharmaceutical companies have made recent progress in a series of agreements to reduce the sales price of some US drugs in exchange for a three-year tariff exemption.

According to the latest agreement, nine pharmaceutical companies, including MSD, Roche's Genentech (Genentech), Novartis, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead Sciences, Boehringer Ingelheim, Amgen, GlaxoSmithKline, and Sanofi, promised to reduce drug prices for Medicaid programs provided to low-income and disabled people, directly sell discounted drugs to consumers, and launch new drugs in the US at the same price as overseas markets.

At the White House Oval Office event, Trump claimed that this batch of new agreements was the “biggest victory” in reducing the burden on patients in the history of the US healthcare industry, and expressed optimism that “drug prices in the US will drop rapidly and will soon be the lowest among developed countries.”