Will Kaback (11:44)
Here's what the Right is saying the right is mixed on Trump Rx, with many saying it delivers on the president's promise to lower drug costs. Others, meanwhile, argue that the site subverts free market principles. In PJ Media, Matt Margolis wrote, Trump reduces medication costs and the left isn't happy Democrats love talking about affordability, but they rarely follow through. If they genuinely cared about bringing down drug costs, they'd be applauding President Trump's latest effort to slash prescription drug prices. Instead, they're attacking him. Trump Rx promises to deliver massive savings on medications, including wildly expensive weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. In every sense, it achieves something that Democrats have talked and talked and talked about, but never succeeded in doing. For decades, American patients have been subsidizing drug costs for Europeans and their so called free healthcare systems. Europeans typically pay far less for new medications than Americans do, which means that US Patients should theoretically benefit from Trump's pricing changes. So why is the left more outraged over the fact that Trump's program is causing prices to go up in other countries and than the fact that Americans have been subsidizing socialized medicine abroad? In reason, Mark Oestreich called the new site Obamacare in Trump's handwriting. For most people, the discounts aren't really discounts. Roughly 90% of Americans are insured and their co pays are almost always cheaper than Trump Rx's cash prices. Medicaid patients already get the steepest rebates, more than 60% off by law. So Trump Rx adds little there. All of this bypasses the way Americans actually get prescriptions. Cvs, Walgreens and the rest are cut out entirely, replaced by a federally branded coupon pop up that punts you to a manufacturer's checkout page. Trump Rx looks like a deal, but in practice, it helps almost no one. If this sounds familiar, it's because the blueprint was drawn a decade ago. Washington shoved through the Affordable Care act with the same central planning arrogance resting on monopolistic deal making and government dictated price regulation. Trump Rx employs the same toolkit. One company receives favorable treatment, the government demands discounts in exchange for tariff protection, and Washington exerts raw power with no regard for the consequences. This leads to squeezed margins, less research, smaller generic drugs being driven out, and higher prices in the long run. Now, here's what the left is saying. The left is skeptical of Trump Rx's value, with some noting it only covers a small number of drugs so far. Others say the logic of Trump's approach to drug pricing is flawed. In the Atlantic, Nicolas Florco described the real winner of Trump Rx. The big winners of yesterday's announcement seem to be not patients, but drug companies. The Trump administration got drug makers to the negotiating table last year by writing letters to the companies threatening to, quote, deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from the continued abusive drug pricing practices. End quote. Drug makers were able to turn that threat into a PR opportunity. When Pfizer cut a deal to participate in the program, the company's CEO was brought to the West Wing, where Trump called the drug company one of the greatest in the world. Drug companies have also successfully protected their ability to charge whatever they please for some of their biggest moneymakers. Many of the pharmaceutical industry's best selling products, some of which are among their most expensive offerings, are absent from the Trump Rx website. Take Keytruda, Merck's cancer drug that was the world's bestseller until it was recently surpassed by the weight loss and diabetes injection Tirzepatide. That drug retails for roughly $12,000 for a three week course of treatment, and it is missing from Trump Rx. Of the top 10 bestselling prescription drugs in 2024, only one, Ozempic, is listed on TrumpRx. In Bloomberg, Lisa Jarvis said the push for lower US drug prices uses bad logic. In exchange for tariff relief, companies agreed to match Medicaid prices to those paid by peer countries, to invest in research and manufacturing in the US and to sell certain drugs at a discount on Trump Rx. That might sound like a win for patients and taxpayers, but the lack of concrete details about the benchmark being used the prices paid by other countries are confidential makes it nearly impossible to evaluate the deals. Earlier legislation is already working to reduce Medicaid drug costs, meaning the US Might already be getting a better deal than its peers. It's also easy to imagine how countries and companies could game the system. Manufacturers, for example, could raise list prices abroad, making the benchmark the US Uses appear higher while quietly offering backdoor discounts. None of this is to suggest that the astronomical cost of healthcare in the US or the system's emphasis on treatment over prevention aren't problems in desperate need of fixing. Rather, it is to say we should price drugs based on the system in which they are delivered. That would require developing a thoughtful, transparent process for evaluating the cost effectiveness of drugs, something pure nations with lower prices already have. And now here's what health policy experts are saying. Some experts say government intervention in drug costs risks driving up prices. Others suggest Trump Rx's out of pocket payment requirement will hurt those it intends to help. In Cato, Jeffrey A. Singer wrote Trump Rx when government tries to build a market, third party payment arrangements tend to drive up drug prices. When insurers or government programs are paying most of the bill, patients have little incentive to resist high prices. In fact, they often push back when payers try to steer them toward lower cost drugs or pharmacies because any savings go to the insurer, employer or the government and not to them. Insurers, for their part, know that denying coverage or refusing to pay list prices can cause backlash from beneficiaries who feel entitled to whatever their plan covers. Injecting government into this space risks crowding out private innovation and inviting the familiar problems of political favoritism, coercion and regulatory corruption. If the administration wants to expand direct to consumer drug purchasing, the most effective role it can play is not to build a federal platform but to eliminate policy barriers that hinder private actors from competing, innovating and lowering prices on their own. Trump Rx risks substituting political allocation for consumer choice in a space that is only now beginning to function like a real market. In stat, Sean D. Sullivan and Ryan N. Hanson said Trump Rx has a fundamental flaw. The promise is seductive lower prices on brand name medications available to anyone willing to bypass their insurance and pay out of pocket. But for most Americans, this initiative represents not a solution to our prescription drug price dilemma, but rather a distraction from it. The fundamental flaw in the Trump Rx model lies in a misunderstanding or perhaps a willful misrepresentation of how most Americans pay for their prescription medications. Most insured people pay far less out of pocket when using their insurance coverage than they would by paying discounted cash prices, even when those prices are subsidized by manufacturers. Consider a common but hypothetical scenario. For older Americans, a patient with diabetes and high cholesterol needs two brand name Januvia and Repatha. Through insurance, they might pay a $35 copay for each drug, about $840 per year. The TrumpRx website will offer Januvia for diabetes at $100 per month and Repatha for cholesterol management at $239 per month. A discount from existing manufacturer list prices of $330 and $573 per month respectively, which is $4,068 per year. Paying cash requires an additional $3,228 out of pocket, or nearly 6% of their total income. For seniors already choosing between medications and groceries, this isn't a discount. Using Trump Rx would represent the equivalent of a tax on those least able to afford it. Alright, that is it for what the right, left and health policy experts are saying. I'm going to pass it over to Ari now to read his take.
