Feb. 5 (UPI) — The White House launched its new prescription drug platform, TrumpRx, on Thursday evening, showcasing the president’s new “most favored nation” drug pricing policy.
President Donald Trump said dozens people throughout the country can buy dozens of the most commonly used prescription drugs for much lower prices via TrumpRx.gov.
“This is a big deal. People are going to save a lot of money and be healthy,” he said during press conference at the White House.
“For years, politicians from both parties have promised to bring down prescription drug prices and make the cost of healthcare more affordable, but they all failed,” the president said. “It was all words, as usual.”
The TrumpRX launch provides consumers with “the largest reduction in prescription drug prices in history” and stops drug companies from forcing U.S. consumers to pay what he called the world’s highest drug prices.
“Americans have long been paying the highest drug prices anywhere in the world, while other countries often paid pennies on the dollar for the exact same drugs.” Trump said.
“We were essentially subsidizing the entire world and subsidizing by hundreds of billions of dollars every year,” he added.
Drug companies obtain 75% of their revenues from U.S. consumers despite the United States having only 4% of the world’s population and 13% of its prescription drug users, Trump explained.
When buying prescription drugs via TrumpRX, consumers can save hundreds of dollars or more after the White House secured agreements with many of the nation’s top drug companies.
Patients with valid prescriptions can obtain user-friendly coupons via TrumpRx and can print or download them to their mobile phones or other distribution channels for respective drugmakers.
The website enables consumers to buy 40 of the costliest and most popular prescription drugs sold in the nation, according to a White House fact sheet.
Trump initially announced his plan in September with the launch of the TrumpRx website.
The idea is to sell prescription drugs at lower prices via the website, so that people without insurance can pay less. But users have to pay in cash because the site will not accept insurance.
The White House said at the time in a fact sheet, “foreign nations can no longer use price controls to freeride on American innovation by guaranteeing [most-favored-nation] prices on all new innovative medicines Pfizer brings to market.”
At the time, Pfizer was the only company on board. Since then, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Amgen, Gilead, GSK, Sanofi, Roche’s Genentech, Boehringer Ingelheim, AstraZeneca, EMD Serono and Novartis have joined.