Have you ever gotten sticker shock at the pharmacy counter?
Your doctor writes you a new prescription, you go to the pharmacy to pick it up, and you’re told that your new medication costs hundreds of dollars — with insurance.
You are left with a choice: pay the exorbitant cost because this drug is the one your doctor recommends, try to get through the phone tree to awkwardly ask for a less expensive medication, or go without the drug. And you’re not alone in facing this dilemma – over 1 in 4 Americans say it is hard to pay for their medications.
But when people go without their medication, it costs them: time, quality of life, and their health. Poor medication adherence claims the lives of 125,000 people annually and costs the healthcare system as much as $300 billion a year.
In 2020, President Donald Trump used the art of the deal to ensure patients in Medicare Part D could buy insulin for no more than $35 per month per treatment they used. When Trump took office in 2025, he immediately went back to work lowering drug costs, and combined with Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bold leadership and courage to think about new solutions to old problems. The Trump administration is finally addressing a frustrating, but solvable, problem that is driving up healthcare costs and risking patient safety: drug price transparency.
Last year, my office at HHS issued a commonsense regulation: the electronic health records used by most doctors would have to show the estimated price of the medication when the doctor writes your prescription. It’s called “real-time prescription benefit,” and it allows prescribers to see, at the time of prescribing, how much a particular drug, and its similar medications, are estimated to cost a person based on their insurance.
In other words, prescribers and patients will have information about estimated drug costs at the time of prescribing, not when they pick up the medication at the pharmacy counter, allowing them to choose the lowest-cost, most effective drug as part of the normal care workflow. When fully implemented, doctors will finally be empowered to factor drug cost into their clinical decision-making — for all medications. Finally.
In addition to showing the estimated price at the time of prescribing, we also want to work with industry to remove other frictions, such as identifying when an insurance company’s authorization is needed before a prescription can be filled and making that information available when the prescription is written. Our goal is simple: use technology to remove frictions for providers and patients and reduce costs.
When used, the patient savings are very real and very staggering. Industry partners have found when providers know the cost of a medication upfront, patients can save over $100 a month by choosing an equally effective, cheaper drug. And patients who take higher-cost specialty drugs can save even more: over $800 per month.
As a practicing physician who has seen thousands of patients, I can say with confidence that this commonsense use of technology will improve patient care and outcomes by helping physicians prescribe the right medication upfront, at the right price.
Despite the many benefits of this technology, more providers need to start using it. We are working with industry and EHR partners to improve the accuracy and timeliness of data, guaranteeing all parties can trust the information shared at the point of care. And while providers can use this technology today, we expect more and more to use it before the end of 2027.
ENDING FREELOADING AND PUTTING PATIENTS FIRST
No administration has been as laser-focused and worked so hard to lower drug costs as Trump’s. From taking the bold action to lower insulin costs in 2020, to negotiating Most Favored Nation deals so the public pays the lowest costs in the world instead of the highest, creating TrumpRx, and now making sure real-time prescription estimated cost information is available, we have a team delivering real patient savings on medications.
For years, politicians have promised to curtail drug costs. But it’s Trump and Secretary Kennedy who have made good on these promises. I’m proud to be working with them to serve the American people.
Dr. Thomas Keane is President Donald Trump’s National Coordinator for Health Information Technology