TrumpRx Drug Prices Fall Short of UK Costs for Many Medicines
Analysis shows around a third of 54 drugs on TrumpRx.gov are cheaper in the UK, while the platform offers significant savings primarily for obesity and fertility drugs not typically covered by insurance.
U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to make prescription drugs cheaper for Americans than anywhere in the world, but his TrumpRx.gov website is not delivering across the board lower prices than those paid in the United Kingdom, according to a comparison of publicly available prices. Prices offered for around a third of the 54 drugs available on the TrumpRx website were lower in the UK.
Those include Pfizer's arthritis pill Xeljanz, AstraZeneca's diabetes drug Farxiga and GSK's inhalers for lung diseases, which were between 67% and 82% cheaper in the UK.
Trump has hailed the website as proof of his efforts to slash U.S. drug prices "from the highest... to the lowest" across the world, and said that some medicines are now "300% to 600%" cheaper, which is mathematically impossible. Healthcare affordability is a key issue for the president as Republicans fight to retain control of Congress in November elections.
Wayne Winegarden, a medical economist at the right-leaning Pacific Research Institute think tank, said TrumpRx has only set a rough ceiling on what Americans paying cash might spend out of pocket rather than making medicines more affordable. Winegarden described TrumpRx as "a big... really expensive coupon book," which offers a discounted rate or links to manufacturer-run websites where they can be purchased. It reflects direct-to-consumer cash prices, not what most Americans - who have private or government-sponsored insurance - actually pay.
The biggest savings are in the widely sought-after obesity drugs Zepbound from Eli Lilly and Novo's Wegovy. Both companies struck a deal with Trump in November to cut prices for the GLP-1 injections to between $149 and $350 a month on average for Americans, down from an initial list price of more than $1000 a month. Fertility drugs, which like obesity medicines may not be covered by insurance, have also seen meaningful price cuts.
EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Germany's Merck KGaA, in the U.S. and Canada, said its TrumpRx pricing reflects U.S.-specific negotiations rather than international price comparisons. The company said TrumpRx provides an 84% discount from list prices of its three U.S. fertility drugs, typically used together in an in vitro fertilization protocol.
Other drugs that already have generic competition, such as Pfizer's steroid Medrol and cholesterol treatment Lopid, are also cheaper than their branded counterparts overseas. Americans with private insurance have out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs based on flat-fee copays or coinsurance based on a percentage of the cost of the treatment.
The UK's NHS sets prices it pays for medicines through a mix of cost-control agreements and other assessments. In England, patients pay a standard prescription charge of 9.90 pounds ($13.19) for each medicine, unless exempt. Prescriptions are free in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Aaron Kesselheim, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said the TrumpRx website and most-favored-nation deals are voluntary with no enforcement measures and do not broadly address the policy issues that lead to high prices. "I'm not surprised that the end result is something that is not workable for the vast, vast majority of patients," Kesselheim said.
The deals are expected to be a mixed bag for drugmakers' profits. Swiss drugmakers Novartis and Roche have said it would be immaterial. Novo warned sales and profit could drop as much as 13%.
TrumpRx is an online platform that consumers can use to search for discounted, ostensibly MFN, prices on brand-name medications when paying without using insurance (referred to as "self-pay" or sometimes "cash-pay"). TrumpRx does not offer direct-to-consumer purchasing, meaning patients cannot purchase these medications from the TrumpRx website. Instead, for the majority of its advertised drugs, it allows consumers to print drug manufacturer coupons that can be used at retail pharmacies at the time of purchase.
As of February 20, 2026, 43 different prescription medications from five manufacturers were listed on TrumpRx, used in the treatment of a range of conditions, such as asthma, arthritis, infertility, and diabetes. The 43 prescription drugs currently listed on TrumpRx include one "authorized generic" (of a brand-name product from the same manufacturer) and one biosimilar; the rest are brand-name drugs. There are currently more than 24,000 FDA-approved prescription drugs in the U.S.
Additionally, the terms and conditions listed on most of the TrumpRx coupons indicate that they cannot be used in California or Massachusetts. State law in California and Massachusetts prohibit the use of prescription drug coupons unless a generic equivalent is unavailable.
A drawback of TrumpRx is that discounts are available only to patients who buy drugs in cash. That means people must pay for prescriptions out of pocket and can't use their health insurance, while those expenses will not count toward meeting a consumer's health plan deductible.
To assess the savings available through TrumpRx, one patient organization compared the service with what consumers can find for the same drugs via GoodRx, a Santa Monica, Calif., company that offers discounted meds. TrumpRx's pricing was superior for only eight drugs: Bevespi (chronic bronchitis) — 89% discount through TrumpRx; Cetrotide (fertility) — 93% discount through TrumpRx; Farxiga (Type 2 Diabetes) — 52% discount through TrumpRx; Genotropin (human growth hormone) — 60% discount through TrumpRx; Insulin Lispro (blood sugar control) — 65% discount through TrumpRx; Ovidrel (fertility) — 67% discount through TrumpRx; Xigduo XR (Type 2 Diabetes) — 70% discount through TrumpRx; Zepbound (weight loss) — 72% discount through TrumpRx.
GoodRx offered equally steep discounts on 33 of the drugs listed on TrumpRx, while cheaper generic alternatives were available for 15 TrumpRx medications. For example, Colestid, a drug that lowers cholesterol for people at risk of heart disease, costs $67.20 if purchased through TrumpRx, while a generic version of the drug costs $21.70.