White House launches direct to consumer drug site

President Donald Trump on Thursday is slated to announce the launch of TrumpRx – a direct-to-consumer website that is key to his administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug costs in the U.S. 

In a post on X, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump and other administration officials will debut the new website at 7 p.m. ET on Thursday. 

She said millions of Americans would save money through TrumpRx, but it’s still unclear if all patients – particularly those with insurance coverage – will see more cost savings from using that site to buy their medicines. TrumpRx targets people who are willing to pay with cash and forgo insurance, which suggests that people without or with limited coverage may benefit the most. 

The site is not expected to sell drugs directly to American patients, but will act as a central hub that points them to drugmakers that are offering discounts on certain products on their own direct-to-consumer sites. For example, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have offered their blockbuster obesity drugs at hefty discounts to cash-paying patients. 

In recent months, both companies and at least 14 other drugmakers have negotiated agreements with the Trump administration to participate on the platform and voluntarily sell certain medicines at a discount to Medicaid patients. Those landmark deals are part of Trump’s broader “most favored nation” policy, which pushes to link U.S. drug prices to the lowest ones abroad.

It is the government’s latest effort to try to rein in U.S. prescription drug prices, which are two to three times higher on average than those in other developed nations – and up to 10 times more than in certain countries, according to the Rand Corp., a public policy think tank.

In an exclusive interview with CNBC last week, Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks said the company was the first drugmaker to sell obesity treatments directly to patients, and that TrumpRx is “taking that and expanding it across the industry” to other medicines.

“We’re all for that,” Ricks said.

But those list prices are often far higher than what private insurers and government programs ultimately pay for medicines after rebates, discounts and other concessions, according to researchers at Georgetown’s Medicare Policy Initiative. That suggests some payers may already be securing prices comparable to — or lower than — the newly announced discounts on medications under the Trump deals.

The researchers cited one study that found that average discounts on brand-name drugs in Medicare Part D run around 40% of list prices. Meanwhile, discounts in Medicaid exceed 75%, according to a Congressional Budget Office study.