by Brittney Melton

July 19, 2026

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A look at TrumpRx nearly 6 months later

by Sydney Lupkin, pharmaceuticals correspondent

When TrumpRx launched, I stayed late at NPR headquarters so that I could watch the announcement and cover it for NPR’s radio broadcasts and digital news. But by the time I finished filing, the only ones left at the Science Desk were me and the shark puppet that lives in a disconnected toilet from a long-ago photo shoot.

I went home thinking about what would happen next. Would people actually use TrumpRx? Would it save them money?

Sydney Lupkin/NPR

At launch, there were 43 drugs on the site. Researchers told me that it wasn’t going to do much to solve America’s drug pricing issues, despite the president’s claim that it was “the biggest thing to happen in healthcare, I think, in many, many decades.”

Nearly six months later, there are many more drugs on TrumpRx and even more questions. The site exists largely because 17 drug companies made deals with the Trump administration under the threat of tariffs, and in exchange, one of the things they promised to do was offer their drugs at a discount on a website bearing the president’s name.

But the text of those agreements isn’t public. Not yet, anyway.

And although many government websites make their analytics information public on analytics.usa.gov, TrumpRx doesn't. So while we know 88,943 people downloaded a file about IRS Form W-9 between July 8 and July 15, we have no idea how many people have downloaded coupons from TrumpRx to get their deals. And we know even less about who's using them.

But a question I realized we could answer was simply about what’s missing from TrumpRx. What drugs did the pharmaceutical companies leave out of their dealmaking with the Trump administration?

The Food and Drug Administration maintains multiple drug databases. Ultimately, I decided to use its National Drug Code Directory to figure out how many brand-name drugs each of the 17 companies made.

It was, not surprisingly, harder than I thought, thanks to mergers, acquisitions and subsidiary companies. Searching for Bristol Myers Squibb drugs, for instance, wouldn’t yield all the Bristol Myers Squibb drugs. I had to look for drugs from “E.R. Squibb & Sons, L.L.C.” Some Gilead drugs are in there under “Kite Pharma, Inc.,” which Gilead acquired in 2017.

Once I carefully found all possible alternative names for the companies that made agreements with the Trump administration, I could tally the number of brand-name drugs they had on the market. I counted conservatively — only counting a drug once even if it has multiple forms and billing codes.

And at the end of the day — or OK, a few days — I had a table comparing the number of TrumpRx drugs and their denominators, for each of the 17 companies.

What’s left out? Drugs for HIV. Drugs for cancer. Some of the companies’ top-earners. In short, most of those companies’ brand-name drugs.

Check out more great reads from the NPR network you may have missed:

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Pod Club

In episode artwork for TED Radio Hour's “Tracking what your body needs,” a human nervous system is animated with radiating pastels

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Thanks for tuning in to last week's episode of It's Been a Minute, which explored what Love Island USA reveals about modern dating.

Today, we’re listening to TED Radio Hour. The episode explores new ways for monitoring and understanding our health, using both advanced technology and everyday habits. Listen to the episode or read the transcript.

What have you found to be the best way to monitor your health? After listening, let us know by clicking here. Your response could appear in next week's Sunday newsletter.

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And, on this week's episode of The Sunday Story from Up First, NPR's Frank Langfitt follows the story of dozens of strangers who discovered through DNA tests that they were half-siblings, all conceived by the same fertility doctor through artificial insemination. They had to decide what, if anything, made them a family.

A test of WI-T

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It's time for the Sunday Puzzle! For this week’s on-air challenge, every answer is a familiar two-word phrase or name in which the first word starts with “WI-” and the second word starts with “T-.” For example, if you're given the phrase “Tricky puzzle,” the answer would be “WIT TWISTER.” Test your skills here. Check the page later to hear the answers, or catch them live on Weekend Edition at 8:41 a.m. ET.

This week's online challenge comes from The New York Times Spelling Bee editor Sam Ezersky. Take the name of a popular 21st-century film with animals, in eight letters. Remove the first and last letters, then change one of the remaining six letters to a C, to spell a plural word for certain animals. What words are these? Submit your answer here, and you could win a chance to play next Sunday's on-air puzzle.

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