WASHINGTON (TNND) — A bipartisan group of lawmakers held a hearing on Wednesday centered around ensuring greater transparency on how President Donald Trump brokered “Most Favored Nation” deals with top drug companies.
The hearing comes just days after the Trump administration launched TrumpRx.com, a website offering Americans access to drug prescriptions at a lower price. The website offers consumers without insurance coupons to 43 different drugs which they can then use at the pharmacy to help pay for their prescriptions.
The purpose of the website, which is to provide consumers’ access to affordable prescriptions, is well over a year in the making. Last year, Trump administration officials met with at least 16 pharmaceutical manufacturers for negotiations that ensure the consumers in the United States do not pay more for prescription drugs than consumers in other countries.
“Starting tonight, dozens of the most commonly used prescription drugs will be available at dramatic discounts for all consumers throughout a new website,” Trump announced on Thursday.
However Republicans and Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee raised questions and concerns pharmaceutical company leaders about whether Trump’s negotiations will actually render benefits for consumers. Lawmakers have raised concerns that many details surrounding the Trump administration’s negotiations have not been made public, an issue which was reiterated by hearing witness Rachel Sachs, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
“We don’t know basic things like which drugs are included, what the agreed-upon prices are, and to whom they will be available? And how does the government have any ability to detect and enforce violations of these agreements?” Sachs said.
PhRMA CEO Lori Reilly, testified befoe the committee that they’d “have to take their word for it” that the deals made with the Trump administration are in the best interest of consumers.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), ranking member of the committee, called her answer “unacceptable.”
“It’s absurd for me to take the word for it. I mean, that’s not what we do,” Pallone said. “We don’t take the word for anybody. We question, we do oversight, we look into it.”
While TrumpRx does offer couple heavily reducing the costs of fertility and weight loss drugs; a review of the other drugs with coupons on the site shows it’d be cheaper for consumers to use their insurance than TrumpRx.
“This is a website that has undergone a lot of hype, but it’s not clear exactly how much it’s going to help those people who use prescription drugs,” Ben Rome, a health policy researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, told NPR.
“And for the vast majority of people, it’s going to continue to be less expensive for patients to purchase their medicines using their insurance than it is to pay cash prices for the medicines, even if those cash prices are highly discounted below the manufacturer prices.”
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