White House launches direct-to-consumer drug site

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced the launch of TrumpRx, a direct-to-consumer website that is key to his administration's efforts to reduce prescription drug costs in the U.S.

The president said millions of Americans would save money through the platform. But it's still unclear whether all patients, especially those with insurance coverage, will see more cost savings by using that site to buy their medications than with existing methods. TrumpRx targets people who are willing to pay cash and forgo insurance, suggesting that patients with no or limited coverage may benefit the most.

“You're going to save a fortune and this is also very good for healthcare in general,” Trump said at an event Thursday night launching the website.

The site does not sell drugs directly to American patients, but instead acts as a hub that directs drug makers to offer discounts on certain products on their own direct-to-consumer sites, or gives them discount coupons to take to pharmacies. For example, Eli Lilly and Nordisk They were already offering their blockbuster anti-obesity drugs at deep discounts to cash-paying patients, even before the reductions Trump touted Thursday.

By clicking on the platform's offer for Lilly's popular Zepbound weight loss injection, consumers are taken to the company's LillyDirect platform, where they can request the treatment and submit prescription details.

In recent months, Lilly, Novo and at least 14 other drugmakers have negotiated deals with the Trump administration to participate in the platform and voluntarily sell certain discounted drugs to Medicaid patients. Those landmark deals are part of Trump's broader “most favored nation” policy, which pushes to tie U.S. drug prices to lower ones abroad.

At launch, the site features only drugs from the first five companies that reached pricing agreements with the administration: AstraZenecaLilly, EMD Serono, Novo Nordisk and Pfizeraccording to a White House fact sheet. It will include drugs from other companies “in the coming months,” management said.

The platform is the government's latest effort to try to control prescription drug prices in the United States, which are two to three times higher on average than those in other developed nations, and up to 10 times higher than in certain countries, according to Rand Corp., a public policy think tank.

But TrumpRx “doesn't seem to be the only solution” to that problem for most Americans, said Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the Medicare Policy program at KFF, a health policy research organization. Cash offers could be better deals for uninsured patients, but it's difficult to assess exactly how many people will benefit from TrumpRx, he added.

“If they can get a medication covered by their insurance with a relatively affordable copay, then there are no big advantages to using the TrumpRx website,” Cubanski said.

He said people with insurance coverage who buy through direct-to-consumer platforms may also not count their purchases toward their benefits, meaning it doesn't help them meet their deductible or out-of-pocket maximum.

But Cubanski said there is a chance that TrumpRx could be useful in expanding access to certain medications at more affordable prices, particularly drugs that are not widely covered by insurance in the U.S., such as obesity medications. Medicare will begin covering weight-loss treatments for the first time later this year as part of deals Lilly and Novo struck with Trump, but many employers are still hesitant to cover those drugs.

Still, many of the other products expected to appear in TrumpRx are already widely covered by insurance, and some are available as cheaper generics from competing drugmakers.

Questions remain about how much savings people can expect if they buy their medications at direct-to-consumer prices.

Announced price reductions for certain drugs are framed as sharp cuts to so-called retail list prices. For example, under Novo Nordisk's agreement with the administration, some doses of its diabetes drug Ozempic will be priced at $350 a month on TrumpRx, which is less than half its monthly list price of about $1,000.

But those list prices are often much higher than what private insurers and government programs ultimately pay for the drugs after rebates, discounts and other concessions, according to researchers at Georgetown's Medicare Policy Initiative. That suggests some payers may already be locking in prices comparable to (or lower than) the recently announced drug discounts under the Trump deals.

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

In the private sector, “we have insurers and pharmacy benefit managers negotiating lower prices and designing an insurance benefit that allows people to benefit from those price negotiations,” KFF's Cubanski said.

“My guess is that for most drugs, at least most brand-name drugs, people are likely to get a better deal by using their insurance rather than purchasing a drug through a direct-to-consumer website,” he said.

At the launch of the site, the administration listed a variety of major medications available for discounts, with special emphasis on popular GLP-1 products:

• Ozempic diabetes injection, made by Novo Nordisk: from $199 a month, up from $1,000
• wegovy obesity injection, made by Novo Nordisk: from $199 per month, up from $1,350
• wegovy pill for obesity, made by Novo Nordisk: $149 per month for initial doses
• Zepbound obesity injection, made by Eli Lilly: from $299 per month, up from $1,086

The White House also emphasized cash discounts on fertility drugs like EMD Serono's Gonal-F, which was listed at $168.

Dozens of other drugs that companies expected to appear on the platform were not as of Thursday evening. These include key treatments from companies such as amgen, merck and Gileadinter alia.

In an interview with CNBC at a conference in January, Bristol-Myers Squibb CEO Chris Boerner said the company has multiple products on its existing direct-to-consumer platform, which first offered a cash discount on its Eliquis blood thinner. That platform will eventually link to TrumpRx, he said.

The company will examine ways to include additional products in its portfolio on its own platform, “where it makes sense,” Boerner added. He said Bristol Myers is “aligned with the administration” on the issue that the U.S. healthcare system is too complex, and said multiple middlemen can drive up costs.

“What we like about these [direct-to-consumer models]”What makes sense from a business standpoint is being able to get around some of that,” Boerner said.

Meanwhile, 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 drugs.

“We're all for it,” Ricks said.