'Political extortion': WSJ delivers tongue-lashing over TrumpRx

President Donald Trump got a tongue-lashing from the conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal editorial board on Wednesday over his announcement of "TrumpRx" — a website intended to bypass insurance and sell prescription drugs directly to consumers at discounted prices.

Already, some experts have raised alarms about the site due to privacy, with one New York legal expert warning people not to put their medical information into a site controlled by the president. But that's the least of the board's worries.

"Someone should have told the President that private businesses already do this," wrote the board. "One example is Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drug Co., which markets itself as selling 'safe medicines at the lowest possible price.' We know Mr. Trump doesn’t like Mr. Cuban, but there are other competitors, and why does the federal government need to become a drug marketer? Doesn’t it already do enough not very well?"

Furthermore, the board continued, very few people ever pay for drugs at full list price anyway: "Most Americans pay far less out-of-pocket for medicines using their insurance cards at neighborhood pharmacies. A Berkeley Research Group study last year found that drug makers receive only about 50% on a dollar of revenue for every drug they sell in the U.S. Most of the rest goes to pharmacy benefit managers, which use rebates from drug makers to reduce insurance premiums. Out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs accounts for a mere 1% of U.S. healthcare spending."

This all reads like a political stunt to make voters think Trump is fixing health costs when he isn't, the board continued, and all of this comes as he uses his drug tariffs as a bargaining chip to control the prices drug companies set.

"Mr. Trump on Tuesday announced a deal that gives Pfizer a three-year reprieve from his mooted 100% tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals. In return, Pfizer will sell medicines to Medicaid at a price that matches the lowest paid in the developed world—the so-called most-favored-nation price," wrote the board — a good deal in the short run for Pfizer, "since federal law already requires companies to sell drugs to Medicaid at huge discounts."

The problem is that Trump is demanding other companies cut such deals with him too, or face more punitive tariffs.

"This is a form of political extortion akin to what Democrats did with their pharma price controls in the Inflation Reduction Act," wrote the board. "The real winners in all this are in China, which is bidding to replace the U.S. as the home of the world’s leading biotech and pharma industry."