| Pharmaceutical companies have been making deals with the Trump administration to avert looming tariffs on their products and the ingredients needed to make them. Now medical device companies are jumping on board. Medical technology giant Becton Dickinson on Monday announced a $19 billion U.S. investment package that’s tied to an agreement to expand domestic production of essential medical supplies and strengthen the supply chain for products that are “critical to patient care and health care preparedness.” In return, it will get relief from any Section 232 tariffs that the government imposes on any covered products, so long as the company meets the agreed-upon targets included in the agreement. A Trump administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the details, confirms that this is the first tariff-relief deal that it has secured with a medical device company. It follows the $650 billion in investment commitments the administration says it’s received from drugmakers. Tom Polen, BD’s chairman, CEO and president, said that the agreement with the government will allow BD to expand its U.S. manufacturing footprint and make the medical supply chain more resilient. Why it matters: BD, which makes both medical devices and high-demand disposable products such as syringes, is turning years of U.S. manufacturing investments into a much bigger deal with the Trump administration. Medical consumables such as needles, syringes and IV supplies are mundane until there’s a shortage. And BD is one of the biggest U.S. suppliers of those products. The question is whether more companies will follow. President Donald Trump touted the deal in a social media post Monday evening, crediting the impending medical device tariffs, which he said “will be in place by the end of the year.” “BUILD IN AMERICA, HIRE AMERICAN WORKERS, AND TREAT AMERICAN PATIENTS FAIRLY OR PAY!,” Trump wrote in the post. The backdrop: The headline number is new, but the reshoring effort itself isn’t. In January, BD had announced plans to invest $2.5 billion in U.S. manufacturing over five years, including $110 million in funds to expand the ability to manufacture prefillable syringes from a Nebraska plant that it said would help “accelerate biologic and GLP-1 drug delivery” and assist in “pharmaceutical reshoring.” BD has been building out its footprint in Nebraska and elsewhere for years. In 2021, the company announced new needle and syringe manufacturing capacity in the state as part of a $70 million project partly backed by millions in funding from the federal government through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to support efforts to vaccinate Americans for covid-19 during the pandemic. It announced additional investments in 2024 and 2025 to expand or improve its needle, syringe and IV production lines. What’s new is the scale and the government agreement around those investments. Here’s what BD is promising: - Over the next several years to invest $19 billion in the United States, including money for operational improvements and work to bolster its supply chain.
- Direct $3 billion of that total toward expanding its U.S. manufacturing footprint, which it’s already established in Nebraska, Connecticut, Georgia, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.
- Add about 5 billion disposable medical supplies — such as syringes and IV catheter systems — per year to its domestic capacity, bringing roughly 80 percent of its U.S. supply under domestic production.
- Produce all BD needles used in the U.S. domestically and use American-made steel to make them.
“This provides greater long-term certainty for manufacturing and supply chain planning as BD advances investments in U.S. production, innovation and health care infrastructure,” the company said in a statement. The Trump administration is shifting its health price transparency push from writing new rules to policing what insurers and hospitals actually disclose, officials said at an event held at the Department of Health and Human Services headquarters. In addition to unveiling the new transparency in coverage (TiC) rules — which I had reported about first on Monday — and showing how they could be used to help researchers, consumers, or employers make care and coverage decisions, administration officials at the event emphasized that the update provides regulators with a crucial enforcement tool to ensure proper disclosures. “Enforcement will be a top priority moving forward,” said Peter Nelson, who directs the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS leader Mehmet Oz was more blunt: “We’ve got insurance companies that don’t comply; they’re out there,” adding that the requirements will “make it a lot easier to find and verify who’s cutting corners.” “I’m guaranteeing you we will find you,” Oz said. “This is not something that any of us can tolerate anymore.” → But insurance companies aren’t the only ones in the crosshairs. Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, announced that the agency sent warning letters to 24 of the nation’s largest hospitals and health systems, informing them that facilities and health systems can face liability under the FTC Act for failing to provide timely, accurate and complete prices for nonemergency care. The FTC is also drawing a bright line between its authority and the hospital price-transparency regulations led by CMS. The CMS price-transparency requirements, Ferguson writes, are a “regulatory floor” and do not provide a safe harbor from FTC liability. Incomplete disclosures — including prices that leave out physician or facility fees — can potentially be deceptive, as can information that is inaccurate or isn’t provided sufficiently in advance for scheduled care. At the HHS event, Ferguson specified that the letters went to the largest for-profit health systems that represent more than 1,000 offices and facilities. The FTC, which typically posts its warning letters and recipients online, isn’t disclosing which hospitals or health systems received a letter. The agency also wouldn’t respond to an inquiry about why the names were being withheld. The letters do not allege that the recipients violated the law but rather tell providers to review their practices and correct problems. “Let me be clear: These letters are a warning. Health care providers must disclose their prices to consumers. … If they do not, then the FTC will take them to court,” Ferguson said at Monday’s event. “The FTC has already opened price-transparency law enforcement investigations against hospitals, and we will not rest until pricing transparency in health care is the universal norm.” Senior health and national security officials met at the White House Monday to discuss the death of a laboratory worker in Siberia potentially related to pneumonic plague, my colleagues Lena H. Sun, Dan Diamond and Mary Ilyushina in The Post newsroom report. It comes as the federal government officials — including those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, State Department, Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, and other agencies — are working to learn more about the case, and whether the 28-year-old woman, who worked at an institute dedicated to studying plague, had pneumonic plague. U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal briefings, told The Post that the effort is being stymied because of a hesitation among Russian officials to disclose additional information. Russian authorities have announced “anti-epidemic measures” in the Irkutsk region of Siberia and quarantines at several hospitals. But it’s not yet clear whether the woman had pneumonic plague, which can cause severe lung infections, or something else. Rospotrebnadzor, a Russian public health agency, said she died after contracting pneumonia of “unknown” origin. “We should be alert but not panicked,” one U.S. health official told The Post. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that “it’s incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world,” which The Post’s John Hudson characterized as the most forceful language yet from the Trump administration about the situation. On Monday, Rubio said that the U.S. government is “watching and monitoring it closely,” saying the situation isn’t “cause for alarm.” “But it is cause for focus and a cause to just keep an eye on it,” he said. Read more: “U.S. officials seeking details of reported Russian plague death, quarantines.” “Pennsylvania measles outbreak is first in 35 years to top 1,000 cases,” The Post’s Lena H. Sun reports. “Can you live longer for $5,500? Longevity clinics are the buzzy new trend at nonprofit hospitals,” reports Sarah Todd at STAT. “America’s disease detectives overseas are starting to close up shop,” Politico’s Carmen Paun reports. “RFK Jr. announces vaccine injury clinic, initiative at NIH,” Rachel Cohrs Zhang and Sandhya Raman report at Bloomberg. “Texas Pediatricians Face Paxton Investigations for Vaccinating Children,” reports Christina Jewett at the New York Times.
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