health insurance<\/a>, which means those who do have insurance remain at the mercy of any agreements between their insurers, drug manufacturers and pharmacy benefit managers when it comes to pricing. <\/p>\nThe apparent bait-and-switch nature of the Trump administration\u2019s latest project was met with derision from Democrats in Congress, including Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden of Oregon, who said in a statement that there \u201cis no greater fraud than Donald J. Trump when it comes to lower drug prices.\u201d<\/p>\n
His colleague, Sen. Pete Welch, of Vermont, said Trump \u201cloves to talk a big game and make promises to working families about lowering prescription drug prices\u201d while his administration \u201chas done nothing\u201d to address health care costs that have skyrocketed because he allowed ACA premium tax credits to expire at the end of last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll he\u2019s done is kicked people off their health insurance \u2026 families and businesses have been left holding the bag,\u201d Welch said.<\/p>\n
![\"Medicare](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-2259517422.jpeg\")
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open image in gallery<\/p>\n
Medicare administrator (and ex-TV doctor) Mehmet Oz and AirBnb founder turned U.S. Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia joined President Donald Trump for the rollout. (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the ranking member on the House\u2019s Energy and Commerce Committee, called the TrumpRx project \u201ca textbook example of the \u2018waste, fraud, and abuse\u2019 Republicans in Congress claim they want to eliminate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis fly by night platform not only threatens patients\u2019 health, safety, and privacy, but also likely includes kickback schemes designed to enrich President Trump, his family, and their friend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But one of Pallone\u2019s former colleagues, ex-New Jersey congressman Rob Andrews, was willing to offer at least some praise for the administration\u2019s efforts \u2014 with a few caveats.<\/p>\n
Andrews, a Democrat who was one of the original authors of the Affordable Care Act, told The Independent the TrumpRx concept was a positive one because it could induce \u201cmore competition and therefore better prices in the pharmaceutical industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
But at the same time, Andrews stressed that the concept \u201chas to be expanded to be meaningful\u201d by inducing the same sorts of cost reductions for drugs purchased by people using their commercial health insurance. <\/p>\n
\u201cI would also like to see a way that employers could help their employees take advantage of the portal, because when you get to expensive drugs, most people aren’t going to use them unless or buy them unless their insurance plan covers them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOpening up a portal and saying that someone can then access to better drug pricing … might work, but the underlying problem is all of the people in the supply chain between the maker of the drug and the user of the drug \u2014 the patient \u2014 who take money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Botta, a Harvard-trained health care economist who co-founded the health care technology startup SesameCare, also told The Independent that the TrumpRx project, though limited in scope, could still make a dent in families\u2019 prescription costs, which currently make up around 14 percent of Americans\u2019 total health care costs.<\/p>\n
He also said Trump deserves credit for \u201cusing the bully pulpit\u201d to browbeat pharmaceutical manufacturers into lowering prices, even if only for a limited number of customers paying cash prices with the coupons obtained on the website. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think there’s real opportunity there to help people realize that there are actual alternative channels where you can save money relative to your health insurance, or even, obviously, relative to paying cash, just accepting the price that they give you at the pharmacy. And in general, that’s a good thing,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[163,85,46,482],"class_list":["post-280288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-medication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\u201cTrumpRx,\u201d](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-2259517267.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-05-at-7-53-04-PM.png\")
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