Buffalo, NY (WBEN) - President Trump launched his TrumpRx website last week, with the goal of reducing prescription prices. One local pharmacist hopes the site will help steer customers to places like his.
Pharmacist Steve Giroux says Trump last week signed the appropriations bill, which included a long standing effort to regulate and rein in pharmacy benefit managers like Caremark Express Scripts and Optum Rx, who control 85% of the marketplace, and in fact, were charged with negotiating rebates and discounts from pharmaceutical manufacturers. "We don't know a lot yet in terms of the details, but it's a website that acts as a portal to direct patients to the lowest prices for specific drugs," says Giroux. "Some of the drugs will provide coupons, or sometimes it'll direct patients to bring those coupons to our pharmacies, which we hope is the way it should work, as opposed to bypassing the local pharmacy, where you have access to a healthcare professional that can answer questions."
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Giroux says Trump Rx is for outside of insurance. "That's the part that we're pretty unclear on, this is going to bypass not only the PBMs, but also the insurance so if you have insurance coverage, it may not be that relevant to you, because you would much rather pay your insurance co payment unless it's exorbitant, or unless you're in the deductible phase. And if you don't participate in the deductible phase, you never get out of the deductible phase. But so it's for basically uninsured or people that don't want to use their insurance, which is sometimes perfectly appropriate if they're going to save a lot of money," explains Giroux.
His hope is relief comes through the local pharmacy. "There were many local pharmacies, specifically Rite Aid, that closed in our market area and across the country. Community pharmacists are very important, reliable, valuable health care resources. They're accessible in most communities, and we hope that this will continue to fuel that connection, rather than circumvent it. So that's what we're hoping to see as the plans unfold for how Trump Rx will work," says Giroux.
Giroux says he's not asking to make a huge percentage of expensive drugs. "We're just asking to be paid fairly for processing the claim and for delivering the service having nothing to do with the cost of that product. It should be the same if it's a $2 product or a $2,000 product, and yet, many times they'll pay us below our cost on the $2,000 product. Makes absolutely no sense," notes Giroux.
Trump’s administration also has negotiated lower prices for several prescription drugs for Medicare enrollees, through a direct negotiation program created by a 2022 law.