By Michael Erman
Feb 6 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s new prescription drug website, TrumpRx.gov, is focused largely on the significant discounts the administration has negotiated for users of the popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, limiting its savings for all consumers, experts said.
Trump unveiled the website – which is a central pillar of his efforts to lower drug prices in the United States – at a White House event on Thursday night.
While 16 of the largest global drugmakers struck “most-favored nation” deals with the Trump administration to cut drug prices for Americans in exchange for exemptions from U.S. tariffs and promised to list drugs on the site, only five companies had done so as of Friday.
Trump has touted the website, saying his administration was delivering massive, immediate savings to millions of Americans.
The website discounts are on fewer than 45 drugs – more than 30 of them from a single manufacturer, Pfizer. A significant subset of the drugs already has cheap generic rivals on the market.
The White House said that additional drugs from other companies would be made available in coming months.
Stacie Dusetzina, professor of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said the website was less comprehensive than she was expecting, particularly given the buildup.
“A small proportion of people may be able to find a better deal on their medicines,” Dusetzina wrote in an email. “For most people in the US, they are likely to be better off paying for their medicines with their health insurance and not using TrumpRx, assuming the drug they need is covered by their plan.”
COUPONS AND DISCOUNTS
The drugs are not directly for sale on TrumpRx. The website offers either a coupon for a discounted rate or links to manufacturer-run websites where they can be purchased.
The discounts off list prices range from 33% to over 90%, but the actual cost of the drugs can still run quite high. Pfizer rheumatoid arthritis medication Xeljanz is a third off its list price, but still over $1,500 for a monthly dose.
The government negotiated GLP-1 drug price cuts to as low as $149 a month and around $350 a month, on average, from more than $1,000 a month, helping the Americans who pay for them outside insurance.
The price for fertility drug Gonal-F, which is made by Merck KGAA unit EMD Serono, is $168, a cut of 83% from the list price.
Juliette Cubanski, deputy director for Medicare policy at health-policy organization KFF, said patients who need access to fertility drugs could be helped by the program.
“These groups of drugs are generally not well covered by insurance,” she said. “But paying $200 a month for Ozempic, for example, is still a lot of money for a lot of people … these prices may still represent a price tag that’s too much.”
(Reporting by Michael Erman in New York; Additional reporting by Puyaan Singh and Padmanabhan Ananthan in Bengaluru; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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