WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is turning to an unconventional approach to lowering drug prices in the United States: striking deals directly with big pharma companies in an attempt to bring U.S. prices in line with what other countries pay.

Trump and the nation’s health care officials have touted these “most-favored nation” deals as the most effective means to getting pharmaceutical prices down, beyond even the power of the Medicare drug price negotiations already in place.

The key issue, health experts say, is that the public has had little visibility into these deals.

“The hard part, of course, is we don’t know exactly what’s in there,” said Spencer Perlman, managing partner and director of health research at the consultancy Veda Partners. The administration has held news conf

See Full Page