Trump Administration Lays Out Great Healthcare Plan for Lower Patient Costs

President Trump announced late on Thursday his strategy for the Great Healthcare Plan, which is a broad health care initiative, according to a news release.¹ Promising to reduce drug prices and insurance premiums while ensuring transparency and accountability among large health care corporations, the administration is vowing to put patients and their health care costs first.

“Instead of putting the needs of big corporations and special interests first, our plan finally puts you first and puts more money in your pocket,” President Trump said in the news release. “The government is going to pay the money directly to you. It goes to you, and then you take the money and buy your own health care…the big insurance companies lose, and the people of our country win.”

Stemming from his first term as president, Trump continues to put forth his plans for reducing patients’ financial burden of prescription drugs and health care services in the US. Since his return to the White House at the start of 2025, Trump has announced a direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug platform called TrumpRx,² reintroduced the Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) drug pricing policy,³ and signed a bevy of executive orders to further drive his goal of reduced health care costs.^4-5

READ MORE: How TrumpRx Is Bringing Unprecedented Change to the Drug Supply Chain

However, all of these actions—whether started during his first term or reestablished in his second—have amalgamated until now, paving the way for his overarching health care and prescription drug approach within the Great Healthcare Plan.

“President Donald J. Trump is calling on Congress to enact the Great Healthcare Plan, a comprehensive plan to lower drug prices, lower insurance premiums, hold big insurance companies accountable, and maximize price transparency,” according to the Great Healthcare Plan’s official website.⁶

Lowering Prescription Drug Costs

In Trump’s announcement of his plans, he proclaimed that Americans would “now be paying the lowest cost paid by any other nation” for prescription drugs.¹ Through global benchmarking of other nations’ prices and working with manufacturers that market drugs in the US, the first part of his plan to lower medication costs is backed by the MFN policy.

As officials use other nations’ prices to benchmark drugs in the US, Trump has also struck deals with major manufacturers like Pfizer to sell their drugs DTC on the TrumpRx website.⁷

According to John C. Goodman, PhD, senior fellow at the Independent Institute and president of the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research, TrumpRx is looking to bypass pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) entirely—an entity that many think are predatory and unnecessary players within the drug supply chain.²

Finally, amid the Great Healthcare Plan’s focus on lowering drug costs, the administration also announced an approach toward greater use and distribution of over-the-counter (OTC) products.

“The Great Healthcare Plan makes more verified safe pharmaceutical drugs available for OTC purchase,” continued authors of the plan’s online fact sheet.⁶ “This will lower health care costs and increase consumer choice by strengthening price transparency, increasing competition, and reducing the need for costly and time-consuming doctor’s visits.”

Improving Americans’ Insurance Coverage

Aside from its focus on prescription drug costs, the Great Healthcare Plan is also designed to address patients’ financial burden from high insurance premiums.

“My plan would reduce your insurance premiums by stopping government payoffs to big insurance companies and sending that money directly to the people,” continued Trump during his announcement.¹ “Obamacare was designed to make insurance companies rich. I call it the UNAFFORDABLE Care Act, with billions of dollars and taxpayer subsidies that help their stock prices skyrocket over 1700% as you paid more money for health care every single year—more and more the premiums went higher and higher.”

Although the specific mechanisms he would be using to enforce this unprecedented change in the insurance environment have not been disclosed, Trump vowed to end any government kickbacks to insurance brokers, PBMs, and middlemen that have historically driven up drug costs.

He did, however, lay out future requirements for insurance companies to ensure greater accountability and transparency in the supply chain.

“The Great Healthcare Plan creates the ‘Plain English Insurance’ standard by requiring health insurance companies to publish rate and coverage comparisons upfront on their websites in plain English—not industry jargon—so consumers can make better insurance purchasing decisions,” the website continued.⁶ “[It] will require health insurance companies to publish the percentage of their revenues that are paid out to claims versus overhead costs and profits on their websites and require health insurance companies to publish the percentage of insurance claims they reject and average wait times for routine care on their websites.”

Finally, the plan also steers more transparency among health care providers, making them and any insurer who accepts Medicare or Medicaid display pricing and fees in their place of business.

Despite action plans not explicitly being relayed and experts showing skepticism, Trump’s newest “Great Healthcare Plan” is inherently attempting to benefit everyday Americans seeking affordable medications. However, amid the complexity of health policy in the US and the various statutes that have come before it, the Great Healthcare Plan could potentially hurt more than it helps.

“When it comes to health reform, the devil is in the details, and this lacks detail. Some provisions look very similar to ones that are already in the Affordable Care Act (ACA),” Cynthia Cox, senior vice president at KFF and expert on the ACA and health care costs, told the Guardian.⁸ “Other provisions, in particular the idea of sending money directly to the people, sound like radical departures from the ACA. It’s not clear from the summary exactly what is meant by that, but it has the potential to severely impact the stability of the ACA marketplaces.”

READ MORE: Most Favored Nation: Global Benchmarking to Reimagine US Drug Distribution

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REFERENCES

1. President Trump unveils the Great Healthcare Plan to lower costs and deliver money directly to the people. News Release. The White House. January 15, 2026. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/01/president-trump-unveils-the-great-healthcare-plan-to-lower-costs-and-deliver-money-directly-to-the-people/

2. Nowosielski B, Goodman JC. Trump Administration looking to bypass PBMs through online DTC pharmacy. Drug Topics. December 3, 2025. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://www.drugtopics.com/view/trump-administration-looking-to-bypass-pbms-through-online-dtc-pharmacy

3. Nowosielski B, Lanton R. Why Trump’s second term is different for the MFN drug pricing policy. Drug Topics. December 15, 2025. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://www.drugtopics.com/view/why-trump-s-second-term-is-different-for-the-mfn-drug-pricing-policy

4. Nowosielski B. President Trump signs executive order significantly decreasing US drug prices. Drug Topics. May 12, 2025. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://www.drugtopics.com/view/president-trump-signs-executive-order-significantly-decreasing-us-drug-prices

5. Nowosielski B. Executive order to limit PBM control, lower drug costs. Drug Topics. April 17, 2025. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://www.drugtopics.com/view/executive-order-to-limit-pbm-control-lower-drug-costs

6. The Great Healthcare Plan. The White House. January 2026. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://www.whitehouse.gov/greathealthcare/

7. Nowosielski B. White House strikes deal with Pfizer for lower drug prices, online DTC website. Drug Topics. September 30, 2025. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://www.drugtopics.com/view/white-house-strikes-deal-with-pfizer-for-lower-drug-prices-online-dtc-website

8. Luscombe R, Schreiber M. “Absolutely no detail”: experts alarmed as Trump unveils healthcare plan. The Guardian. January 15, 2026. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/15/trump-healthcare-reform-framework