Pfizer and other drug companies have met with the Trump administration to discuss lowering U.S. drug prices but no commitments have been made, Chief Executive Albert Bourla said Monday.
The meetings focused on high-level ideas and were not digging into any substance yet, Bourla said, speaking at Goldman Sachs' Global Healthcare Conference.
"The meetings were cordial, but they were not digging into the substance," Bourla said.
President Donald Trump last month issued an executive order directing drugmakers to lower the prices of their medicines to align with what other countries pay, but legal experts have said the policy will be difficult to implement.
The Department of Health and Human Services has said it expects drugmakers in the U.S. to set prices for their products at the lowest price it receives in countries that have a gross domestic product per capita of at least 60% of U.S. per-capita GDP.
Bourla said he is hopeful that, given U.S. pressure on European countries to pay more, prices there could increase. He said that if the U.S. resorts to price controls, Pfizer could consider not making drugs available for government reimbursement in some countries if prices don't increase there.
"I don't think we will remove our products from the markets there - we will just remove them from reimbursement," Bourla said. "We will leave them in open market."