President Trump boasted proudly of his work on lowering drug costs during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, holding up his “most favored nation” (MFN) policy and TrumpRx.gov as proof of having accomplished what his predecessors did not.
“I’m also ending the wildly inflated cost of prescription drugs like has never happened before,” Trump said. “Other presidents tried to do it, but they never could. They tried.
“I took prescription drugs, a very big part of health care, from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. That’s a big achievement. The result is price differences of 300, 400, 500, 600 percent and more, all available right now at a new website called TrumpRx.gov,” he added.
In the audience he pointed out Catherine Rayner, a military spouse and the first user of TrumpRx.
“She and her husband have struggled with infertility, and they turned to IVF. One drug has been costing Catherine $4,000 to purchase, but a few weeks ago, she logged on to the TrumpRx website and got that same drug that cost $4,000, got it for under $500,” said Trump.
TrumpRx was unveiled earlier this month as a platform where coupons for a few dozen drugs could be printed or downloaded onto a phone and taken to a pharmacy. The discounts ranged from 50 percent to 93 percent off the list prices of the drugs.
Many of the drugs, however, have generics already on the market, available at significantly lower prices along with coupons that can be found on platforms like GoodRx. Although experts were unsure how transformative the coupon platform would be, they noted that some medications on the website are not often covered by insurers, providing a feasible avenue to pay for these drugs for some patients.
Trump called on Congress to codify his MFN pricing policy into law.
