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Have you ever been taken aback by the cost of medication at the pharmacy? You’re not alone. The truth is, the healthcare system often prioritizes profits over patients, with individuals in the U.S. bearing the brunt of these costs while other countries and corporations benefit.
In most areas of life, you know the price before you pay. At a restaurant, for example, you review a menu, see the prices, and make an informed decision. In contrast, healthcare operates more like a game of chance, with unexpected costs and surprise bills becoming the norm. As a result, healthcare expenses have soared over the years, leaving one-third of working-age Americans grappling with medical debt.
Despite the U.S. dedicating $5.5 trillion of its GDP to healthcare, many patients still struggle to access necessary treatments. To address this, former President Trump introduced TrumpRx as part of his Great Healthcare Plan. The initiative aims to empower patients by reducing the ability of countries and companies to exploit American healthcare dollars. TrumpRx provides a direct route for Americans to obtain medications from manufacturers, bypassing insurers and eliminating surprises at the pharmacy. This approach ensures medications are available at straightforward prices, without middlemen, setting a new precedent in healthcare.
Consider a patient with rheumatoid arthritis. Such medications can be complex, and generic alternatives may not always be effective. While a drug might be officially covered, patients often face hurdles like lengthy authorizations or “fail first” policies, which favor alternative treatments that might not be ideal for them. TrumpRx aims to address this by making a broader range of drugs available, ensuring patients can access the specific medication prescribed by their doctor at a reasonable cost. Research from the America First Policy Institute suggests that with TrumpRx’s “Most Favored Nation” pricing, patients could save up to 95% on their annual healthcare expenses.
These savings are significant, reflecting a concerted effort to support families who are juggling costs like mortgages and monthly bills. For a single mother on Obamacare, even if her medication is covered by her insurance, TrumpRx could offer a more cost-effective option, potentially reducing her expenses by 38.5% compared to her insurance plan. This initiative helps individuals break free from a healthcare system that often feels unresponsive to their needs.
This is patients-first policymaking by President Trump that looks for ways to make health care easier to use with greater control by patients and at lower costs. At lightning speed, President Trump has taken on the freeloading that has slowly increased prices and decreased transparency for patients.
For decades, other countries invested little in developing cures because they could just pay pennies on the dollar for the treatments developed in the American market. America-last policymakers were so desperate to seek the approval of other countries that they let American patients get ripped off. Instead of insisting that other countries pay their fair share for drugs that American companies and American research institutions developed, they green lit trade deals that allowed other countries to charge much less, or, allowed countries to access generic versions of American taxpayer-funded drugs before Americans could access the generic version of those drugs.
TrumpRx uses Most Favored Nation pricing to end this global freeloading, and it is already working. Reports show that costs between Switzerland and the United States are starting to even out. In addition, the Trump administration has secured a commitment from the U.K. to end their share in global freeloading. From defense to health care, American taxpayers aren’t going to let other wealthy countries freeload off of our investments.
It’s not just wealthy countries that freeload off American patients – it’s Fortune 50 companies that use anti-competitive practices to siphon patient dollars away from patient care. President Trump ended this freeloading by signing into law a long-awaited PBM transparency bill, which forces PBMs to provide an itemized receipt for their drug costs, meaning no more hidden costs. The administration, through the Federal Trade Commission, announced a settlement with one of the largest PBMs, Express Scripts, to reverse decades of anti-competitive behavior which led to patients being forced into higher-cost drugs. And now through TrumpRx, the president is making drugs available to all Americans at a no-middleman cost – making these PBMs compete with TrumpRx to provide drugs at the lowest cost.
President Trump is putting patients first by giving Americans more control over their health and their healthcare dollars by ending the freeloading off of the American patient.
Hannah Anderson is the Director of Healthy America Policy and Senior Director of Policy at the America First Policy Institute.