The Trump administration is delaying the release of TrumpRx, an online platform that lets people buy prescription drugs directly from pharmaceutical companies at a discount, according to Politico. While the reason for the delay is unclear, it comes as Democratic senators raise questions about how the platform will work—and whether it will be legal.
Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) sent a letter to the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday seeking answers on how the OIG will oversee the direct-to-consumer (DTC) platform and, specifically, how it will apply the anti-kickback statute.
“Legitimate concerns about inappropriate prescribing, conflicts of interest, and inadequate care have been raised about the exact types of DTC platforms to which TrumpRx would route patients,” the senators write.
To date, details on how TrumpRx will work have not been provided, and Congress’ oversight requests have gone unanswered by HHS. However, Durbin and other senators have spent months investigating DTC websites. They found that they sometimes allow consumers to pre-select prescription drugs they would like to take, then connect with telehealth providers—that may be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by big pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs—who prescribe the medications, sometimes with brief appointments and limited access to medical records.
In other words, DTC websites run by pharmaceutical companies use “hand-picked telehealth companies to inappropriately steer patients toward specific, high-cost medications and inflate Big Pharma’s profit margins,” the senators write.
In an investigation last year of DTC platforms from Eli Lilly and Pfizer, the senators found that the pharmaceutical giants “spent up to $3 million combined for partnerships with telehealth companies, who funneled patients to the manufacturers’ products. … In one instance, 100 percent of the patients routed to a virtual visit with one of Eli Lilly’s chosen telehealth companies received a prescription.”
There’s already reason to be suspicious of conflicts of interest with TrumpRx, the senators note. There’s a “potential relationship between TrumpRx and an online dispensing company, BlinkRx, on whose Board the President’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., has sat since February 2025” the senators write.
The lawmakers are concerned that TrumpRx will violate the anti-kickback statute, which bars payments for inducing patients to use services or products that are reimbursable by a federal health care program.
Brian Reid, principal at health consultancy Reid Strategic, speculated to Politico that the delay of TrumpRx’s debut may be related to anti-kickback statute concerns.
“In any other administration, it would 100 percent be the AKS stuff,” Reid said. “It’s clear there’s a lawyer somewhere at HHS who has concerns about anti-kickback.”
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