CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz explains the new “TrumpRx” website, giving discounts to the uninsured on some prescription drugs, on CNN on Sunday morning:

DANA BASH, CNN: I do want to start with TrumpRx. Right — it is intended to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Right now, the site only lists 43 drugs. A lot of them are also available at the same discounted prices through pharmacies or on sites like GoodRx. So what does TrumpRx do differently? DR. MEHMET OZ, ADMINISTRATOR, CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES: Let’s take a step back. When the president entered a year ago, he lamented the fact that we were paying three times more, all of us, three times more for the exact same medications made in the same facilities, often in this country, than the Europeans are paying. And it’s wrong. And so he insisted that we develop what’s called most favored nation drug pricing, which means no one else gets a better deal than America gets. We already paid for a lot of the research, but at least let’s get the benefit when our people have to buy these medications. Remember, one in three viewers right now, when they go to the drugstore, they don’t pick up their medications because of sticker shock. They can’t afford it. So we negotiated with all the major drug companies, most favored nation drug pricing. It was not easy, Dana. You look them in the eyes and you say, this is wrong. You have got to do something about it. And God bless them. All the pharmaceutical companies came to the table and were willing to make these arrangements. But how do you get those deals to the American people? You have got to start somewhere. And so the TrumpRx.gov site is an effort to allow anybody in the country, if they desire — and we’re starting with cash pay costs, because they are our most vulnerable folks. There are probably 27 million people in that category. But, ultimately, it drives transparency into the entire system. Now, we started with 43 medications, and some of them do have generic equivalents. And all of that’s going to be part of this broader push to make sure that you know, before you buy a medication, go check the site, make sure you’re getting the best price possible. You don’t have to use the site. It’s free, by the way. I think many people will use the site. We have already had millions of people, unique individuals, come to the site, tens of thousands of prescriptions already downloaded. You can take it to a local pharmacy, to a mail order pharmacy, sometimes get it directly from the manufacturer. We’re agnostic to that. But I’m going to make one big important point here. You have got to start with a core group. The person who designed the site, Joe Gebbia, founded Airbnb. That’s the kind of massive talent you bring in. He didn’t start with every apartment in the country. He started — or the world. He started with a few. And Ed Coristine, who designed it, wonderful engineer, they wanted to make it work perfectly the first time and then build on top of it, which is what we’re going to do. BASH: OK, so it’s a building block. And you said, and this is important, this right now is intended to benefit people who don’t have insurance to help pay for prescription drugs. But nearly all of the drugs right now on TrumpRx are widely covered under insurance, so the fact that you have on the Web site a warning that says, if you have insurance and a co-pay, go check that out. So the question is how is this going to help lower prescription drug costs for everybody eventually, including those who have insurance? OZ: So, let’s take a couple of specific examples. Let’s take the weight loss drug, right, the GLP-1 medications. BASH: Well, that’s in a lot of cases not covered. OZ: Exactly. That’s often not covered by your insurance, even at… Like, here at CNN, I don’t know if you’re covered, but there’s about a 50/50 chance you’re not for all your employees. And so if you’re covered with insurance for the GLP-1 drugs, you’re going to use that insurance because it’s less expensive to you. But the employer, CNN, will look to see that price, the price on the Web site, is lower than what they’re actually getting from the middleman that’s reselling the product. BASH: Yes. OZ: They’re going to say, I don’t want the — I want the better rice. And you, Dana, if you desire because you don’t have the insurance for whatever reason, to buy it on your own, you can buy it for a price now. It’s about $ 150. By the way, there’s a weight loss pill now, not just an injection. You can now get that pill for 150 bucks, instead of over $ 1,000. BASH: Right. But that’s an example of a drug that isn’t covered in a lot of places, where you could on TrumpRx get a lower price. My question is, the majority of people in this country are insured, but even under that insurance, prescription drugs is still — they are still very expensive. And this doesn’t address that problem. OZ: Oh, it does address it, because, over time, as we add more and more medications to the list, all of those prices come down. And there are some categories — take the fertility drugs, where it’s a 90 percent reduction in cost. That’s a place where most Americans don’t have insurance coverage. There are others like asthma medications when they’re covered. But when the employer sees that the drug price that they’re paying through the middleman is twice as high as what TrumpRx is offering to the cash pay customer, they’re going to insist on… BASH: So you’re saying it’s incentive. OK, let’s talk more broadly about the root cause of this, the skyrocketing health care costs for a lot of Americans. And that is because the premiums that low-income Americans were getting are now expired. This is as part of Obamacare. You told me here in November that the president is laser-focused on this. So far, we have only seen a framework of a plan. What specifically is the president doing right now through the fundamental problem with insurance costs to lower those costs? OZ: Dana, let me just, if I can add, one thing to something you said earlier. We have seen in the ACA marketplace where there was a baseline 83 percent subsidy, that, when you take away the extra 5 percent, which is what the enhanced premium subsidies represent, it doesn’t really affect enrollment. In fact, we’re still roughly at around 23, 24 million people. And that’s despite the fact that all the fearmongers were saying, we’re going to lose eight, 10, 12 million people. No one seems to have left the exchange. BASH: But that doesn’t speak to the cost. The costs are still high. So my question is, can you give me one specific example of a solution that the president has put forward that is lowering the cost of health insurance and health care costs beyond prescription drugs? OZ: There’s something called a CSR, which is a way of making sure that insurance works more efficiently. The Affordable Care Act is a good example of this. These were in the original Working Families Tax Cut legislation, was taken out by the Democrats for reasons that are unclear to me because it seems like it’s better for everybody. It will drop premiums 10 percent to 11 percent across the board. So I’m giving you an insurance hack that works to reduce insurance premiums for the American people 10 percent to 11 percent. We want it back in. We want that to — it was — again, it was originally designed and supposed to be in the Working Families Tax Cut legislation. We want that back. The other thing, Dana, is transparency is vitally critical. When I’m called into the operating room — and I’m a surgeon, as you know — the first thing we do if I’m helping a colleague is we open the wound and put more light in the wound. Transparency. We got to see what we’re doing. Most Americans don’t really know what they’re paying for. Their pharmaceutical prices are an example, but when you go to the hospital, you don’t know what it’s going to cost you. You would never go to a grocery store and put things in your cart and not know what they were going to cost. And that’s what we ask the American people to do. And, of course, because of that, companies jack up the price because you’re not aware. You’re not an informed consumer. We have to drive transparency to the system. So we use our biggest ally, the American people, to judge whether the prices are worth it or not.

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