If the Trump administration launches TrumpRx–a web site for people to buy drugs directly from pharmaceutical companies–it will cut out the Pharmacy Benefit Managers from the process. That sounds good to me as these PBMs, in many if not most instances, are driving up drug costs for Americans.
Others suggest that pharmacies are struggling and that TrumpRx will only make them struggle more. They will somehow face increased scrutiny with TrumpRx. But, it’s hard to be worried about the private equity firm that bought Walgreens pharmacy.
To be sure, it’s not clear that TrumpRx will bring down costs for people with health insurance coverage already. In fact, many think TrumpRx will not provide more meaningful discounts than GoodRx or Costco or some of the other discount pharmacies. Unfortunately, people who want to spend as little as possible on their drugs will literally need to shop around for each drug they take.
Even Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus pharmacy sometimes costs people more than they would pay through their insurers and sometimes charges higher prices for generic drugs than some PBMs. You just can’t be sure where to turn to spend the least amount possible for your drugs. For sure, your Part D Medicare drug plan could easily be charging you a higher copay than a discount online pharmacy charges you for the full cost of a drug.
That said, if TrumpRx advertises lower prices for drugs than people are currently spending, it could pressure others to bring down their prices for those drugs. To date, Trump has announced deals with Pfizer and AstraZeneca on drug prices for people with Medicaid, which could bring down state and federal drug costs a little. But, even though Trump is relieving these pharmaceutical companies of tariffs on imports of their drugs for the next three years, it remains unclear whether either of those two companies will lower the price of any of their brand-name drugs for all Americans.
Here’s more from Just Care:
- GAO finds US drug prices more than four times those in France
- Will TrumpRx simply be a rebranded GoodRx?
- Online pharmacies can save you money
- Case study: Costco saves one couple hundreds of dollars over Medicare Part D
- Medicare names 10 drugs subject to price negotiation
