Initiatives from former President Joe Biden and current President Donald Trump have been effective in reducing the prices of some drugs in the United States. But regardless of the year and the drug pricing landscape, the turn of the calendar always brings news of another wave of price increases.
This year, pharmaceutical companies have raised the prices of more than 350 branded products, according to a report from Reuters, citing research from 3 Axis Advisors, a healthcare consulting and research firm.
The figure is up from 250 price increases at this time last year, according to 3 Axis’ 2025 report. In both reports, the median price bump of the drugs was 4%.
While the year-to-year increase in the number of products with higher prices is significant, they are in line with previous years, including 2023, when companies raised the prices of more than 350 drugs. Additionally, at the start of 2024, drugmakers jacked up the prices on more than 500 drugs.
On a positive note, the average price increases have been falling over the last decade, from 9% in 2025 to 5% in 2022.
The figures are not complete. While some drugmakers reveal price increases before the start of the year, others traditionally do so throughout the first month of the year and into February.
News of the price increases comes less than three weeks after a high-profile White House event in which President Donald Trump revealed that the administration had struck confidential deals with nine drugmakers who had agreed to reduce the price of some of their medicines in the U.S.
Overall, in 2025, Trump’s most-favored-nations initiative produced drug price reduction deals with 15 of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.
Of those drugmakers, at least five have also raised prices of some of their branded products, according to the 3 Axis report. Those companies include Boehringer Ingelheim, GSK, Novartis, Pfizer and Sanofi.
Of the companies that have hiked prices this year, Pfizer leads the pack, increasing the rate on 80 of its products, including a 15% bump for the COVID vaccine, Comirnaty. The company also has increased the price of antiviral pill Paxlovid.
Meanwhile, GSK is increasing the price of its drugs between 2% and 9%, 3 Axis said.
In justifying their price increases, companies typically cite the rate of inflation and the need to fund innovation to create future products.
The 3 Axis report also cites reduced prices for a few drugs, including a 40% drop for Eli Lilly and Boehringer’s aging diabetes medicine Jardiance, which also faces a roughly 66% reduction this year through the price negotiation plan of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).