TrumpRx is a website where patients will be able to access large discounts on many of the most popular and highest-priced medicines in the country, paying prices in line with the lowest paid by other developed nations, the most-favored-nation, or MFN, price, according to the White House Blog.
The launch features drugs made by the first five manufacturers to reach MFN pricing deals with the Trump Administration: AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Novo Nordisk, and Pfizer. Additional drugs from other companies that have signed MFN pricing deals will be made available through TrumpRx.gov in the coming months.
Depending on the manufacturer, patients with valid prescriptions will be able to access savings through coupons that can be printed or downloaded onto their phones or through channels set up by the manufacturer and integrated into TrumpRx.gov, the White House Blog states.
However, consumer and health groups dispute the president’s claims that TrumpRx will lower prescription drug costs in the U.S.
President Trump has dressed up yet another corporate giveaway as a boon to patients, Peter Maybarduk, access medicines director for Public Citizen, an advocacy organization, said in a statement.
“Most patients will do better through their insurance than through TrumpRx,” Maybarduk said. “Many patients without insurance will not be able to afford drugmakers’ still-high prices funneled through TrumpRx.”
But drugmakers certainly will appreciate TrumpRx’s free promotion of their products, delivered with a false veneer of price accountability, he said, adding that TrumpRx is designed to help Big Pharma keep its prices high by diluting the bargaining power of insurance companies, weakening an important check on pharma.
Maybarduk said TrumpRx also appears to be another example of President Trump’s repeated corruption.
“Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. sits on the board of BlinkRx, a key business that may benefit financially from TrumpRx,” he said. “Getting serious about medicine affordability means getting serious about challenging Big Pharma.”
For all Trump’s talk, Big Pharma is getting a lot of special favors from this White House, while patients still are waiting, Maybarduk said.
“Real drug price reform doesn’t look like a website,” he said.
