WASHINGTON — President Trump said his administration’s new TrumpRx website will offer the cheapest prices in the world for 43 brand-name drugs, and counting. But about half of them are already available as generics, usually for much less.
The website is part of the president’s plan to lower drug prices in the U.S. and to counter political attacks by Democrats who have increasingly focused on rising health care costs. Trump unveiled the site on Thursday evening, saying “this launch represents the largest reduction in prescription drug prices in history by many many times, and it’s not even close.”
TrumpRx does not sell medicines directly. Instead, it displays prices available to consumers who pay cash without using insurance, and in some cases directs patients to other sites where they can buy the therapies. The website touts steep discounts for many drugs, compared to their list prices. But an analysis by STAT reveals that’s far from the whole story.
At least 18 brand-name drugs on TrumpRx have cheaper generics available via GoodRx or Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs. In some cases, consumers could save hundreds of dollars by going with the exact same generic medicine, instead of TrumpRx’s price. STAT’s analysis is similar to a finding from Sarah Karlin-Smith, a research director at the advocacy group Public Citizen, and from Brian Reid, founder of Reid Strategic and a senior fellow at Tufts’ Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health.
STAT’s analysis adds to questions about whether TrumpRx will meaningfully improve patients’ ability to afford their prescriptions. Before the website’s launch, experts told STAT that cash prices are generally higher than what patients pay through their health insurance, and noted that none of the spending on these purchases contributes to deductibles or out-of-pocket maximums. In some cases, the cash prices are not available to people covered by government insurance plans like Medicare and Medicaid, even if they don’t use their insurance.
STAT’s analysis excluded cases where a generic drug was available, but at a different dosage or formulation. And it only included drugs that are listed as in-stock on at least one of those sites. In all, 22 drugs on TrumpRx are available as generics.
More drugs will be added to the platform in the coming days, White House Spokesman Kush Desai said. And the Trump administration plans to continue making deals with other pharmaceutical companies to add to the TrumpRx offerings.
That’s not to say that TrumpRx never shows a good deal. Many of its drugs are far cheaper than cash prices elsewhere. EMD Serono’s Cetrotide, used as part of fertility regimens, costs $22.50 on TrumpRx for a prefilled syringe and vial. The price on GoodRx is $309, and a generic version on Cost Plus Drugs is $49.50.
The drugs on TrumpRx now are made by companies that have struck deals with the administration to lower prices to levels paid in other rich countries, a policy called most favored nation pricing. Trump has touted each of those deals with fanfare, saying he is the only president to reverse the trend of Americans paying far more for drugs than other countries.
Pfizer, which was the first pharmaceutical company to cut a deal, has 31 drugs on TrumpRx. Cheaper generics exist for at least 17.
For example, Pfizer’s Protonix, which treats acid reflux and stomach ulcers, is listed on TrumpRx in 30-packs of 20 or 40 milligram delayed-release tablets for $200. Or you can pay about $6 for the generic, in the same dosage and tablet count, at Cost Plus Drugs.
Pfizer spokesperson Steven Danehy said TrumpRx and the company’s own PfizerForAll platform provide patients with simple solutions to lower their costs, and didn’t comment specifically on the drugs the company chose to make available.
Cuban praised the administration for TrumpRx while noting that his company sells many of the same drugs for far less.
“They added a bunch of brands that have generics. So we beat them there. Usually by a lot,” he wrote on X. But he praised TrumpRx’s lower prices for fertility drugs, and added, “I just want lower drug and healthcare prices. This was a positive step forward.”
Direct-to-patient drug sales programs have a role to play in the health care system, filling some of the gaps of poor insurance coverage, according to Reid. But he said that passing off brand-name drugs as a great deal when there are generic alternatives could steer patients away from much cheaper options.
“What are we even doing here?” Reid asked.
A White House official defended the program in a statement, saying that TrumpRx is focused on branded products, winning savings on especially costly drugs without generic counterparts, such as GLP-1s. The manufacturers of GLP-1 drugs, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, were already selling their medicines directly to patients before TrumpRx, but agreed to lower the cash prices in deals with the White House.
“TrumpRx offers branded products. For those branded products, TrumpRx offers the lowest prices,” the official said.
At the request of patient groups, the administration added a statement to TrumpRx advising insured consumers to first check their insurance coverage, to see if they can get their medications more cheaply.
There is no such disclaimer about generics.