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President Donald Trump announced Monday that the government’s discounted-drug website TrumpRx will add more than 600 generic medications, expanding the list of options on the site and scaling up an initiative the administration has promoted as a response to high prescription drug costs.
Trump made the announcement at the White House, presenting the expanded catalog as a major upgrade that would nearly seven times the number of offerings on TrumpRx beyond its initial launch in February, when the site went live with more than 40 medications. TrumpRx is designed to steer people toward lower-cost options rather than act as a direct purchasing platform, and the administration said the new additions are meant to broaden the kinds of drugs available through the discount effort.
The expanded TrumpRx lineup is also framed as an effort to address criticism Democrats have made of the program, including complaints that many brand-name drugs previously featured on the site are cheaper when patients use insurance or can be found at lower cost as generic alternatives elsewhere. Trump’s announcement ties the generics push to affordability concerns that lawmakers and candidates have highlighted heading into November’s midterm elections.
Trump said the expansion became possible through partnerships with other online pharmacies and discount programs, including Amazon Pharmacy and GoodRx, as well as Cost Plus Drugs, an effort backed by billionaire investor Mark Cuban. Trump said Cuban joined the effort at the White House event, where Trump described the expanded site as “the hottest thing in medicine.”
At the event, Trump explained how TrumpRx works: the site is not “a platform for buying medications,” but instead a “facilitator” that directs Americans to drugmakers’ direct-to-consumer websites to purchase the medicines. TrumpRx also provides coupons that users can take to pharmacies, according to Trump.
Trump said the additions increase the number of drugs available on TrumpRx by nearly seven times and said the site has been visited more than 10 million times since it launched in February. He also said, “This has been the greatest breakthrough in lowering health care costs in modern history, but we’re just sort of getting started,” describing the program as a major development as the administration prepares to scale it further.
Even with generic drugs added, experts said the financial benefit could vary by patient situation. Rena Conti, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, said in the coverage that people who have health insurance usually get a better deal using insurance to pay for medications than paying cash through TrumpRx.
Conti said people who are uninsured or who have a high deductible to meet might benefit more from discounts through sites like TrumpRx, and she said the addition of generics would likely provide more options for that group. Cuban has advocated for TrumpRx since the program’s rollout, and the coverage noted that before Monday’s announcement, Cuban had said the one improvement Trump could make would be to add drugs available on his own site.
Cuban, who publicly campaigned for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, previously wrote about TrumpRx in a social media post that referenced savings from the program, saying, “Reality is, it’s saving patients money on IVF and a few other drugs. A lot of money.” Despite past disagreements, the story said Trump and Cuban were congenial at Monday’s event, with Trump telling the audience, “We have the same thing, one thing in common: We want to make people better and keep them wealthy.”
The administration has also promoted other steps aimed at lowering drug costs, including deals between Trump and the 17 major drugmakers to offer medications at the same prices that appear in other developed countries, or lower. The AP account said the details of those deals have not been made public and that lawmakers have raised scrutiny, saying they want to review the contracts.