Trump Touts Drug Cost Savings as He Launches TrumpRx Website (1)

President Donald Trump launched a new website to help Americans directly buy select medicines at a discount, seeking to counter cost-of-living concerns that pose a threat to his party in November’s congressional elections.

“Starting tonight, dozens of the most commonly used prescription drugs will be available at dramatic discounts for all consumers through a new website, TrumpRx.gov,” Trump said at a White House event Thursday to hail the new effort. He was joined by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, government design chief Joe Gebbia as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services.

The administration has touted its efforts to lower the cost of drugs, including by negotiating agreements with more than a dozen of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly & Co., Novo Nordisk A/S and Pfizer Inc., often in exchange for a reduction in threatened tariffs.

Trump said the more than 40 medicines available would include weight-loss drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy, which he said would both be available directly to consumers for $199. The president also said EMD Serono Inc. would “dramatically cut the cost of its most common IVF drug.”

“A single dose of the most common IVF drug in the country, Gonal-F, will plummet from the highest price in the developed world that we paid — the United States was subsidizing everybody,” Trump said.

The website is part of a broader campaign to address Americans’ concerns about costs that have soured voter perceptions of Trump’s economic agenda.

The effort was initially announced in September as part of the government’s efforts to lower US drug costs. It works by allowing patients to search for a specific medicine, then sends them to drug companies’ platforms where they can buy the products at a reduced rate.

The TrumpRx website.

Photographer: Julia Weeks/AP Photo

Oz and Gebbia sought to walk consumers through a demonstration of the website, explaining how they could search for specific pharmaceuticals and locate pricing information.

Direct sales platforms circumvent pharmacy benefit managers, the middlemen who sit between insurance companies and drugmakers. The PBMs help determine which drugs are covered and how much insurers — and ultimately patients — must pay for them. Pharma companies say the system forces them to charge higher prices and hurts patient access.

Read More: Trump Vowed to Slash US Drug Prices. Can He Do It?

Cash-pay options can be helpful for patients whose insurance plans have high drug copays or deductibles, or whose plans don’t cover some medications. It’s been particularly popular for the GLP-1 drugs used to treat obesity, an entire disease category that is often excluded.

Cigna Group’s Evernorth division will dispense fertility treatments from the US health-care business of Germany’s Merck KGaA, Cigna Chief Executive Officer David Cordani said on an analyst call Thursday. The company also agreed to provide people on its drug plans access to TrumpRx as part of a settlement with antitrust regulators this week, pending regulatory changes.

Still, it remains to be seen whether the website will significantly bring down costs and entice large numbers of Americans to pay cash for medicines instead of going through insurance. And the idea of letting consumers purchase medications directly with promises of more transparent pricing is not novel.

Companies have started launching direct-sales platforms themselves. Lilly pioneered the model to help patients to get cheaper weight-loss drugs by speaking to a doctor on a telehealth platform. Pfizer Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. subsequently launched a direct-to-consumer platform for their Eliquis blood thinner after discussions with the White House last year.

Billionaire Mark Cuban, through his Cost Plus Drugs company, has been selling mail-order medications. Cuban has been a sharp critic of pharmacy benefit managers.

Read More: Trump Strikes Deal With Merck KGaA on Tariffs, IVF Costs

Last summer, Trump sent letters to 17 drugmakers with a list of demands. He insisted they lower the prices they charge Medicaid — the health insurance program for low-income and disabled people — as well as sell discounted medicines directly to patients and offer new therapies in the US at the same price available in other developed nations.

“Sixteen of the 17 largest pharmaceutical companies have signed agreements and the other one is coming,” Trump said Thursday, hailing the many firms that struck deals with the administration. In November, Lilly and Novo agreed to offer their best-selling weight loss drugs at a discount through TrumpRx. Pfizer, which was the first company to reach a deal with the administration, said most of its primary care drugs would be available on the platform.

Health care costs have been source of frustration among American households over affordability concerns — and one the president has sought to counter. Democrats seized on the expiration of crucial health insurance subsidies at the start of the year to hammer the administration. In response, Trump last month unveiled a health-care “framework” intended to lower drug prices and insurance premiums, but that effort still lacks many crucial details and faces an uncertain path in Congress.

(Updates with additional details on event, background throughout.)

--With assistance from Skylar Woodhouse, Robert Langreth, John Tozzi, Michelle Fay Cortez, Cynthia Koons and John Harney.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Madison Muller in New York at mmuller84@bloomberg.net;
Catherine Lucey in Washington at clucey8@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Cynthia Koons at ckoons@bloomberg.net

Meghashyam Mali, Derek Wallbank

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