(Reuters) - The S&P 500 rose on Friday, helped by healthcare stocks after President Donald Trump blasted high drug prices but avoided taking aggressive measures to cut them. Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer each rose over 1 percent while Merck & Co jumped 2.8 percent after Trump in a speech said foreign governments "extort" unreasonably low prices from U.S. drugmakers. His healthcare deputies released a series of proposals to address high drug costs. "They've walked the tightrope between cost savings for the American people and maximizing profits for publicly traded healthcare stocks," said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The S&P healthcare index ended 1.47 percent higher, while the Nasdaq Biotechnology index rallied 2.68 percent.

Source: New York Times May 11, 2018 12:18 UTC