President Donald Trump says his prescription drug discounts should win Republicans the midterms — but a new analysis poked holes in that boast with some brutal numbers.
Researchers put the president's promise of the world’s lowest drug prices to the test. The results fell well short of that sweeping claim, NBC News reported.
“This one thing alone should win us the midterms,” Trump recently said at the White House.
“It’s kind of a mixed bag,” Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of KFF’s Medicare policy program, told NBC News.
KFF, a nonpartisan research group, compared 32 brand-name drugs listed on TrumpRx.gov with prices in 11 other wealthy counties. Only five had the lowest prices among the counties — 13 had the highest.
“Even with the reductions that may have been agreed to by manufacturers who are listing their drugs on the TrumpRx website, the prices that they’re offering, even at a discount, still continue to be higher than prices in comparable countries,” Cubanski said.
A monthly supply of arthritis medication Enbrel costs an eye-popping $3,354 through TrumpRx — more than five times the average abroad. Still, some medications, including the cancer treatment Rydapt, were cheaper through the site.
“Those disparities run throughout the site, according to the KFF analysis,” NBC News reported Wednesday.
“I’m not surprised by these findings,” Harvard health policy researcher Dr. Benjamin Rome told the network.
Experts say it’s too soon to know how much TrumpRx will save Americans money, but also warned prices could rise overseas without Americans paying any less.
“It’s not just that the price in the U.S. might come down, but another way of having a lower U.S. price is by having a higher international price,” Cubanski said.
