President Donald Trump has a new plan to tackle rising drug costs—and of course, it’s got his name plastered all over it. Yesterday afternoon, Trump announced the latest phase of his administration’s efforts to lower drug prices. The centerpiece, as previously reported, will include a new website named TrumpRx, intended to help provide Americans discounts on a variety of drugs. The White House also reported that it has reached a deal with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to lower the pricing on many of its drugs, which will be listed on the website as well. At least some outside experts, however, aren’t confident that TrumpRx, or any of the administration’s proposed strategies, will significantly lower most people’s out-of-pocket spending on medications. “I think it’s more underwhelming than what the president is touting,” Ameet Sarpatwari, a pharmaceutical policy expert and an assistant professor of population medicine at Harvard Medical School, told NPR on Tuesday. How TrumpRx will work As laid out by the White House, TrumpRx will not directly sell or distribute drugs to Americans. Rather, it will connect people to drug companies’ direct-to-consumer discount programs. It’s expected to go live sometime in 2026. According to Pfizer, the drugs it will make available through TrumpRx will have an average 50% discount. The company has also pledged to sell drugs to Medicaid and to sell new drugs in the U.S. at the same price as it does in similarly wealthy countries—a policy known as “Most Favored Nation” pricing that the White House has been trumpeting as the solution to high drug costs. Lastly, in exchange for a three-year grace period on paying new tariffs for its imported products, Pfizer has agreed to ramp up domestic manufacturing in the U.S. The White House also suggested that many other companies will soon follow Pfizer’s example and make their drugs cheaper through TrumpRx and other avenues. Unfortunately, all those proposals have important caveats behind them. Why Trump’s plan to lower drug costs is leaky For starters, the discounts available via TrumpRx are dependent on people paying cash for them, meaning they wouldn’t be covered through their insurance. The discounts may also be based on the initial list prices of a drug, which can sometimes be much higher than what people will usually pay for a drug out-of-pocket. (Pfizer stated that the specific details of its agreements with the Trump administration are confidential). Though it’s possible people will save money on a specific drug, especially if it’s not covered through insurance, the average person may spend less for their drugs with their current coverage than they would on TrumpRx, according to Sarpatwari. And many of the most widely used drugs today are likely to still be plenty expensive if bought with cash. Case in point, Novo Nordisk’s direct-to-consumer program now offers a month’s supply of Ozempic or Wegovy, the popular weight loss medications, for $499, a steep discount from the original list prices. “I think it’s more window dressing than the transformational sort of reforms that are needed to really provide relief to Americans struggling with high prices,” said Sarpatwari. Trump’s “Most Favored Nation” plan also has a few leaks to it. While some companies may lower the costs for some of the drugs they will sell to Medicaid and the U.S. to match their prices in the rest of the world, for instance, they may also simply raise the costs of other drugs they sell in these countries to achieve parity. Indeed, that’s a possibility that Trump himself acknowledges. During the announcement Tuesday, he stated, with regards to drug prices, “So we’re going to come down a lot, but the world is going to go up a little bit.” Given Trump’s track record with drug pricing so far, there’s little reason to believe that these latest announcements will meaningfully lower the money Americans regularly spend on their essential medications, at least for now.