The White House announced recently that President Donald Trump delivered on this promise to slash prescription drug prices as new data records the largest drop in prices in over 60 years. Trump is the first president to accomplish this, the administration says.
Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Georgia) is a pharmacist who spoke on the “Washington Watch” program regarding the price drop. Everything from weight loss medications, fertility drugs, inhalers, insulin, cholesterol meds and many others are seeing lower prices.
Carter says that there is a role for Congress to play in helping expand these medication costs. Lawmakers have in fact been very active.
“If you remember back to the Consolidated Appropriations Bill of 2026 that we passed in January, we actually had the most significant reform to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) that we've ever had,” Carter explains. “Instead of them getting a percentage of the drug now, we delinked it to where they'll only get a flat fee. That's bringing prices down.”
PBMs are companies that sit between health insurers/employers, drug manufacturers and pharmacies. Their original purpose was fairly straightforward: manage prescription-drug benefits and negotiate lower prices. Today, however, the largest PBMs have become extremely powerful middlemen in the drug-supply chain.
In 2025, AFN reported on how hospitals skirted around an executive order from Trump’s first term that called for transparency in drug prices. Hospitals were caught posting fewer prices or failing to post prices all together among other things.
Congress also made sure, Carter says, that there is more transparency in the pricing of drugs.
“And that transparency is leading to more of the discounts going to the patient, going to the consumer, as opposed to being pocketed by the insurance companies who own the PBMs,” Carter states. “We also made sure that we were able to have contracts between pharmacies and PBMs and insurance companies reviewed by CMS to make sure that they're reasonable and relevant, and that's especially important.”
Earlier in March, Fox News published an article on Trump’s call for “maximum price transparency” during his State of the Union address. It also mentioned a bill introduced in Congress titled “Patients Deserve Price Tags," requiring prices at different medical facilities to be posted before a patient even walks in.
Carter points to the actions of the Trump administration as a leading factor in the lower prices.
“We had a 1.8% decrease in July alone in the price of drugs. In this year, we've had more discounts, or we've had a decrease in the price, than we've had in the last 60 years, and that’s very important, very significant,” Carter says. “I applaud the administration for the executive orders that they put in — Most Favored Nations, the TrumpRx. All of those things are working.”
As per the White House, Most Favored Nation status resulted in 17 of the world’s largest drugmakers bringing down U.S. drug prices to the lowest paid by comparable developed nations. TrumpRx — a portal to direct users to best prices — has generated $700 million in savings for many American patients, the White House says.
