President Donald Trump on Thursday announced the launch of TrumpRx — a direct-to-consumer website that is key to his administration's efforts to lower prescription drug costs in the U.S.
The president said millions of Americans would save money through the platform. But it's still unclear if all patients — particularly those with insurance coverage — will see more cost savings from using that site to buy their medicines than they would through existing methods. TrumpRx targets people who are willing to pay with cash and forgo insurancewhich suggests that patients without or with limited coverage may benefit the most.
"You're going to save a fortune and this is also so good for overall health care," Trump said at an event Thursday night unveiling the website.
The site does not sell drugs directly to American patientsbut acts as a central hub that points them to drugmakers that are offering discounts on certain products on their own direct-to-consumer sitesor gives them discount coupons to take to pharmacies. For exampleEli Lilly and Novo Nordisk were already offering their blockbuster obesity drugs at hefty discounts to cash-paying patientseven before the reductions Trump touted on Thursday.
Clicking on the platform's offer for Lilly's popular Zepbound weight loss injection sends consumers to the company's LillyDirect platformwhere they can order the treatment and submit prescription details.
In recent monthsLillyNovo and at least 14 other drugmakers have negotiated agreements with the Trump administration to participate on the platform and voluntarily sell certain medicines at a discount to Medicaid patients. Those landmark deals are part of Trump's broader "most favored nation" policywhich pushes to link U.S. drug prices to the lowest ones abroad.
At launchthe site features only medications from the first five companies to strike pricing deals with the administration: AstraZenecaLillyEMD SeronoNovo Nordisk and Pfizeraccording to a White House fact sheet. It will list drugs from other companies "in the coming months," the administration said.
The platform is the government's latest effort to try to rein in U.S. prescription drug priceswhich are two to three times higher on average than those in other developed nations — and up to 10 times more than in certain countriesaccording to the Rand Corp.a public policy think tank.
But TrumpRx "doesn't seem like it is the only solution" to that issue for most Americanssaid Juliette Cubanskideputy director of the program on Medicare Policy at KFFa health policy research organization. The cash-pay offerings could be better deals for patients without insurancebut it's difficult to assess exactly how many people stand to benefit from TrumpRxshe added.
"If they're able to get a drug covered by their insurance at a relatively affordable copaythen there's not a great upside to using the TrumpRx website," Cubanski said.
She said people with insurance coverage who buy through direct-to-consumer platforms may also not have their purchases count toward their benefitswhich means it doesn't help them meet their deductible or out-of-pocket maximum.
But Cubanski said there's potential for TrumpRx to be helpful in expanding access to certain drugs at more affordable pricesparticularly medicines not covered widely by insurance in the U.S.such as obesity drugs. Medicare will start covering weight loss treatments for the first time later this year as part of the deals Lilly and Novo struck with Trumpbut many employers are still hesitant to cover those drugs.
Stillmany of the other products expected to be listed on TrumpRx are already widely covered through insuranceand some are available as cheaper generics from competing drugmakers.
Questions about savings
Questions remain about how much savings people can expect if they buy their medicines at direct-to-consumer prices.
The announced price reductions for certain drugs are framed as steep cuts from their so-called retail list prices. For exampleunder Novo Nordisk's agreement with the administrationsome doses of its diabetes drug Ozempic will be priced at $350 per month on TrumpRxwhich is less than half of its roughly $1,000 monthly list price.
But those list prices are often far higher than what private insurers and government programs ultimately pay for medicines after rebatesdiscounts and other concessionsaccording to researchers at Georgetown's Medicare Policy Initiative. That suggests some payers may already be securing prices comparable to — or lower than — the newly announced discounts on medications under the Trump deals.
The Georgetown researchers cited one study that found that average discounts on brand-name drugs in Medicare Part D run around 40% of list prices. Meanwhilediscounts in Medicaid exceed 75%according to a Congressional Budget Office study.
In the private sector"we've got insurers and pharmacy benefit managers negotiating lower prices and designing an insurance benefit that enables people to benefit from those price negotiations," said KFF's Cubanski.
"My guess is that for most drugsat least most brand-name medicationspeople are likely to get a better deal using their insurance rather than purchasing a drug through a direct-to-consumer website," she said.
Drugs on TrumpRx
At the launch of the sitethe administration listed a range of major drugs as available for discountswith a particular emphasis on popular GLP-1 products:
- Ozempic injection for diabetesmade by Novo Nordisk: Starting at $199 per monthdown from around $1,000
- Wegovy injection for obesitymade by Novo Nordisk: Starting at $199 per monthdown from around $1,350
- Wegovy pill for obesitymade by Novo Nordisk: $149 per month for the starting doses
- Zepbound injection for obesitymade by Eli Lilly: starting at $299 per monthdown from $1,086
The White House also put an emphasis on cash-pay discounts for fertility drugs like Gonal-F from EMD Seronowhich was listed at $168.
Dozens of other drugs that companies expected to be be listed on the platform were not as of Thursday night. Those include key treatments from companies including AmgenMerck and Gileadamong others.
In an interview with CNBC at a conference in JanuaryBristol Myers Squibb CEO Chris Boerner said the company has multiple products on its existing direct-to-consumer platformwhich first offered a cash-pay discount on its blood thinner Eliquis. That platform will eventually link to TrumpRxhe said.
The company is going to examine ways to put additional products in its portfolio on its own platform"where it makes sense," Boerner added. He said Bristol Myers is "aligned with the administration" on the issue of the U.S. health care system being too complexand said several middlemen can increase costs.
"What we like about these [direct-to-consumer models]where they make sense from a business standpointis you're able to circumvent some of that," Boerner said.
Meanwhilein an exclusive interview with CNBC last weekEli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks said the company was the first drugmaker to sell obesity treatments directly to patientsand that TrumpRx is "taking that and expanding it across the industry" to other medicines.
"We're all for that," Ricks said.