By Carole Dykhouse, BSN
Leave it to the hyper-partisans at the Daily Kos to turn a winning bipartisan issue into a political referendum.
On Wednesday, the outlet argued that TrumpRx.gov, the president’s signature healthcare achievement, is not lowering drug prices like the president has stated.
The Kos is dead wrong. By connecting the American people with the cheapest drugs around, it has reduced many patients’ prescription drug bills to record lows.
On TrumpRx, the drug Pristiq, used to treat major depressive disorder, costs $200, which is a reduction from its original $435. Ngenla, a human growth hormone prescribed for children with growth hormone deficiency, is $2,217. That same drug once cost $4,434. Xeljanz, which suppresses an overactive immune system, ran $2,277, but it is now available on TrumpRx for $1,518. Finally, Orencia SC, used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis, cost $3,660. Before TrumpRx, a customer would have to pay $6,070 for that product.
TrumpRx’s cost savings are so incredible that even frequent Trump critic Mark Cuban recently endorsed it.
So why is The Kos fearmongering over it?
It must be because Trump Rx has succeeded in lowering drug costs without adding far-reaching socialist mandates, which is the outlet’s preferred policy remedy. And, the unfortunate truth is that, to hyper-partisans, the underlying prescription chosen matters far more than the results it yields.
While the Daily Kos will never admit it, Trump Rx shows that a president with business skills can think outside the box in a way that no professional politician ever could and, ultimately, help average Americans who pay a fortune for prescription drugs.
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No one needs a new government agency, not one that will only grow and grow and never solve any problems. Such a bureaucracy will only make those problems worse. We’ve had enough of that, thank you very much.
It came about not through adding new government hoops but through voluntary buy-in from the private sector.
Trump negotiated with the CEOs of big pharmaceutical companies — Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Novo Nordisk, among them — for lower prescription drug prices. The president also threatened tariffs against companies that imported prescription drugs from other nations. He enticed drug manufacturers to agree to lower prices and manufacture drugs within the U.S.
Pfizer called their deal a “voluntary agreement with the U.S. government.”
Put another way, Trump used the power of the presidency not to regulate…but to negotiate. Essentially, Trump used his Art of the Deal philosophy to think big with the leverage he had to deliver results.
This month, Trump announced a dramatic expansion of the website, which now covers more than 600 generic drugs, helping Americans in every region of the country and of all income levels get cheaper medications.
TrumpRx is a reminder that sometimes the best way to solve a problem is not to grow government, but to have a president willing to think creatively, negotiate aggressively, and operate more like a businessman than a career politician.
That’s great news for patients, regardless of what hyper-partisans at the Daily Kos might say.
Carole Dykhouse, BSN, is a healthcare public policy analyst. She has over 50 years of experience in nursing leadership
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