Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz and National Design Studio chief Joe Gebbia at the TrumpRx.gov rollout. Alex Brandon/AP
The White House has launched TrumpRx.gov, a website intended to help consumers find discounts on brand-name drugs if they pay cash instead of using health insurance.
The site went live Thursday evening with 43 drugs from five companies that struck agreements with the administration: AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Novo Nordisk and Pfizer. The White House said discounts from 11 other companies that made agreements will appear in the coming months. President Trump called the rollout “the biggest thing to happen in health care, I think, in many, many decades.”
Discounts posted on the site range from about 33% off Pfizer’s Xeljanz, used to treat autoimmune disorders like ulcerative colitis, to roughly 93% off Cetrotide, an EMD Serono drug used in fertility treatments. To access some discounts, customers must click a button attesting they are not enrolled in a government insurance program (for example, Medicare), will not seek insurance reimbursement for out-of-pocket costs, and will not count those costs toward a deductible; they then receive a coupon to present at a pharmacy. Some offers require visiting the drugmaker’s website—for example, AstraZeneca’s Bevespi inhaler for COPD.
The Trump administration first announced TrumpRx as part of fall deals with drugmakers in which companies agreed, in exchange for certain tariff exemptions, to lower Medicaid prices, commit to launching future drugs at prices no higher than those in other wealthy countries, and offer cash-pay discounts through TrumpRx.
Drug policy experts say the site will likely help only a limited number of patients. Dr. Ben Rome, a health policy researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, says for the vast majority of insured people it will remain cheaper to use insurance—co-pays are often lower than discounted cash prices. The TrumpRx summaries themselves note: “This is an out-of-pocket price. If you have insurance, check your co-pay first—it may be even lower.”
Some drugs listed on TrumpRx are already available as inexpensive generics. For example, Protonix is listed at $200 on TrumpRx, while its generic, pantoprazole, can cost about $30 with a GoodRx coupon. Still, for people whose medicines aren’t covered by their plans—such as those seeking fertility treatments or obesity drugs—cash-pay discounts can be useful. Rome says those patients may shop around for the best price via TrumpRx, GoodRx, Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs, Costco or other discount platforms.
TrumpRx’s limited roster of drugs is similar to existing discount sites, and GoodRx announced it is a “key integration partner” for companies offering discounts on TrumpRx.
Some Democrats have raised legal concerns. On Jan. 29, three Senate Democrats sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general saying they do not believe the office has adequately addressed whether TrumpRx and affiliated direct-to-consumer platforms comply with federal law, expressing worries about potential illegal kickbacks, conflicts of interest and unnecessary medication use.