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healthcare
As Costs Soar for Millions, TrumpRx Scam Offers Savings on 'Exactly One' Drug: Analysis
The CAP analysis emphasized that TrumpRx—touted by the administration as a path to "immediate relief" for consumers in the country with the highest drug prices in the world—is extremely limited by design, listing just 0.2% of all federally approved medications in the US.
Additionally, the terms that site users must accept before gaining access to coupons for discounted prices state that beneficiaries cannot be "enrolled in insurance from any government, state, or federally funded medical or prescription benefit programs."
Patients also must have a prescription to use TrumpRx for discounts. "According to a KFF analysis," CAP noted, "nearly half (46.6%) of uninsured adults ages 18 to 64 reported not seeing a doctor or other health professional in 2023."
"Applied to the estimated 27.9 million adults without insurance in 2026, this means that approximately 13 million Americans will never reach the most basic prerequisite for using TrumpRx: a visit with a clinician who can write a prescription," CAP added.
The think tank's analysis found that 17 of the drugs on TrumpRx—or over 30% of them—have generic equivalents that are available at a lower cost elsewhere, something that the Trump-branded platform doesn't tell users.
"Among the remaining 37 drugs without lower-cost generics, GoodRx offers comparable or lower prices for 20," CAP found. "That leaves 17 drugs where TrumpRx appears to offer a better deal. But in 16 of those cases, the same or lower prices were already available through manufacturer coupons and patient assistance programs. After accounting for all existing discount channels, just one drug—Cetrotide, a fertility medication—offers a price that was not previously available to cash-paying patients."
Neda Ashtari, associate director of health policy at CAP and author of the new analysis, said in a statement that the Trump administration is "undermining the most powerful tool for lowering patients’ costs at the pharmacy counter—health insurance coverage—and replacing it with a government-branded coupon book."
“For the 22 million Americans whose premiums have doubled, and the millions more who stand to lose coverage," due to Trump and the GOP's refusal to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, "a $56 discount on a fertility drug is not 'immediate relief,'" Ashtari added.
CAP's analysis was released a day before The New York Times and the German news organizations Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR, and WDR debunked Trump's claim last month to have delivered the lowest drug prices "in the entire world"—which would be news to the 1 in 3 US adults who say they've rationed medications, skipped meals, or made other painful tradeoffs over the past year to afford healthcare expenses.
"The drugs listed on TrumpRx can cost American patients up to hundreds or thousands of dollars, while a patient walking into a German pharmacy pays next to nothing," the Times observed on Wednesday. "The German health system foots the bill, and records show that, more often than not, it pays less than what the Trump administration negotiated for Americans."
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