The Trump administration on Tuesday announced plans to launch TrumpRx.com, an online platform that it says will direct Americans to lower-priced drugs.
The announcement came one day after President Trump’s deadline for drugmakers to comply with his “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) executive order, which included a mandate for companies to establish direct-to-consumer for medicines, cutting out middlemen.
Chris Klomp, deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said on Tuesday that drugs would be made available through the platform “often at full MFN, and always at lower prices than currently available. This is bypassing middlemen. It increases transparency, and many instances, prices are 80 percent lower than they are today.”
A senior administration official said it hoped to launch the website early next year, in a briefing Tuesday.
“To be clear, the government is not getting into the drug distribution business. Rather, this is a convening site where Americans can come and know that this is a place where they can go direct-to-consumer and access the lowest prices available through the President’s MFN initiative,” they added.
How the site will be constructed and other finer details are still being worked out, according to the official.
Asked whether patients will be able to use their insurance to purchase drugs through TrumpRx.com, a senior administration official did not directly answer, noting instead that pharmaceutical manufacturers are often public companies with fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders as well as other “obscures priorities.”
The move echoes on that the pharmaceutical industry launched just the day before, with the trade group PhRMA launching AmericasMedicines.com on Monday, gathering different drugmakers that currently offer direct-to-consumer programs.
