Prescription Drug Prices Fall 3.1%, Johnson Credits Trump and GOP

A real drop and a stretched claim

House Speaker Mike Johnson has spent late summer pointing to one statistic as proof that Republicans are lowering costs for families. In an August 25 post on X, the Louisiana Republican said prescription drug prices were at their "LOWEST LEVELS" in more than 60 years and credited President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans. He called it a real result rather than an empty promise.1 He had made nearly the same claim on August 16.3 By mid-September he was folding it into a broader midterm pitch, telling audiences that Republicans had produced "the largest drop in prescription drug prices in 60 years" since taking back control of government.9

The data underneath the boast is real, and it is unusual. Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price figures show prescription drug prices fell 3.1% in the 12 months ending in July. That is the steepest annual decline since 1963.710 Prices fell 0.8% in July alone.4 The broader medicinal drugs category, which includes over-the-counter products, fell 2.7%, even as overall consumer prices rose 3.4% from a year earlier.10

Johnson's wording goes further than the numbers do, though. The coverage that first reported the figures described the sharpest drop in more than six decades, which is a statement about how fast prices changed.710 It is not a statement about where prices now sit. A 3.1% decline follows decades of increases. Federal data cited in conservative coverage show prescription prices in 2024 were 5.5 times their 1985 level and rose about three times as fast as overall inflation over that period.8 A single year of decline does not take prices back to 1960s levels. The fair version of the claim is that prices are falling at a pace not seen since the Kennedy era, and that is notable without any exaggeration.

Who gets the credit

The sharpest disagreement in the coverage is over what caused the decline. The White House and Republican campaign groups pin it on the administration's own tools: the "most favored nation" (MFN) pricing deals with drugmakers and the TrumpRx direct-to-consumer website. White House spokesman Kush Desai said those deals and the website were "delivering real results."10 The National Republican Congressional Committee said TrumpRx pushed discounted generics and GLP-1 drugs into the market. It also said the CPI category had now fallen for seven straight months, the longest such run in its history.2 Trump told reporters he had predicted the decline.2

Independent economists quoted in mainstream outlets give a more mixed explanation. The Washington Post reported that experts pointed to several factors, including more generics and cheaper GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, and said the causes were hard to separate.710 Brookings fellow Richard Frank told the Post that Medicare price negotiation, created by President Biden's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, was a more likely driver.10 Negotiated Medicare prices for the first 10 drugs took effect on January 1, 2026. A second group of 15, including Ozempic and Wegovy, follows in 2027.10 Benzinga also listed the Medicare negotiations among the contributors, and noted that a federal judge recently rejected Merck's constitutional challenge to the program.1

Some right-leaning analysts also push back on the administration's story. Fred McGrath of the Institute for Legislative Analysis said generic and biosimilar competition was probably the biggest market force. On policy, he gave the most weight to the pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) reforms Trump signed in February as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act.34 He also pointed out that MFN-priced drugs make up less than 10% of the 841 medications on TrumpRx.34 USC health economist Geoffrey Joyce said the scrutiny on PBMs and greater transparency in the supply chain had disrupted the usual way the market worked.5

The weight of the evidence supports this reading: the decline has several causes, and the policies Republicans want credit for are only part of it. Biosimilar competition, a Democratic-passed Medicare negotiation law, and a bipartisan PBM package all plausibly matter as much as TrumpRx or more. The administration's pressure campaign may have added to the decline, but it does not explain all of it.

What the drugmaker deals actually cover

The MFN effort has grown quickly. After Trump's May 2025 executive order and his July 2025 letters to 17 major manufacturers, deals followed with Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Merck and others.27 On August 31, 2026, the White House announced agreements with nine mid-sized companies, including Teva, Astellas, CSL and UCB. That brought the total to 26 manufacturers, which the administration says cover 89% of the branded drug market.2126 The new signers promised MFN prices to every state Medicaid program, MFN pricing on future drug launches, and at least $19.6 billion in U.S. manufacturing investment.2426 The White House says TrumpRx has saved patients more than $700 million since it launched in February.21

Trade policy is part of the arrangement. Companies that align with MFN pricing get a three-year suspension of possible pharmaceutical tariffs.22 CNBC reported that drugmakers are spending billions to move manufacturing to the U.S. and expanding direct-to-consumer sales partly to protect themselves from tariff threats. Novo Nordisk has warned that lower U.S. prices are weighing on revenue.26

The deals cover less than the headline numbers suggest. Industry and policy analysts note that the agreements mainly affect Medicaid and cash-pay purchases. Prices for patients with private insurance or Medicare remain largely unchanged.22 A Medicaid policy consultant told Pharmaceutical Executive that Medicaid patients already pay $4 to $8 per prescription, so the cost of the deals falls on manufacturers rather than showing up as patient savings.24 A Health Affairs analysis concluded the agreements are unlikely to change near-term prices dramatically for most patients, with the benefits going mainly to uninsured and underinsured people who pay cash.27 ING Research estimated that uninsured Americans might save about $2 billion through TrumpRx, a small slice of roughly $700 billion in U.S. drug spending.14

The discounts on TrumpRx also vary widely. A KFF analysis reported by NBC News found TrumpRx prices lower than the average abroad for 17 drugs and higher for 15. Only five were the lowest in the world, and 13 were the highest.30 Ozempic costs $349 a month on TrumpRx, compared with a next-highest price of $190 in several other wealthy countries. A month of Enbrel costs more than five times the foreign average.30 That makes Trump's claim at the Republican midterm convention, that the U.S. went from the world's highest drug prices to the lowest, hard to support.30

List prices kept rising

The most awkward fact for the victory lap came in January. Drugmakers raised U.S. list prices on at least 350 branded medicines, up from about 250 a year earlier, with a median increase of around 4%.11 By mid-January, 46brooklyn Research counted more than 850 increases.14 By February the count had reached 931, a pace the firm described as fairly typical for the start of a year.18 All 16 companies that had pricing deals at the time raised at least some prices.1718 Pfizer, the first company to sign a deal, raised prices on about 80 products.13 Novo Nordisk and Lilly each raised the list prices of Ozempic and Mounjaro by 3%.14

The main exceptions came from Medicare negotiation. Jardiance's list price fell more than 40%, and Eliquis fell 43%. Both are among the first 10 drugs with negotiated Medicare prices.1118 List prices do not equal what patients pay, because rebates, discounts and insurance design all affect the final cost.14 Even so, the January pattern undercuts the idea that the pharmaceutical industry has broadly changed course.

The political stakes

Republicans are clearly treating the statistic as a central affordability argument for November. The NRCC says Republicans accomplished in under two years what Democrats only promised.2 The issue matters to voters: a KFF analysis released in March found that six in 10 adults worry about affording their medications.3 The policy fight also crosses party lines. Democratic Sen. Peter Welch has backed Trump's MFN approach.1 Trump wants Congress to write MFN pricing into law through his health care plan, because the current deals depend on agreements with individual companies.241

The falling CPI number is real and worth noting. But Johnson's version of it confuses the speed of the decline with the level of prices, and it credits one party for a result that several policies produced, including Biden's Medicare negotiation law and a bipartisan PBM package. Whether the decline lasts will depend more on Medicare negotiation, generic competition and Congress than on announcements about new deals.