Washington is once again debating whether to pour more taxpayer dollars into Obamacare subsidies. But for millions of Americans struggling to afford their prescriptions, this fight misses the real problem. Health care isn’t expensive because families aren’t subsidized enough. It’s expensive because Washington keeps standing in the way of cheaper healthcare options.
For this reason, President Donald Trump traveled to Pennsylvania in late 2025 to outline his administration’s competing vision to bring down health care costs. The president didn’t mince words about Obamacare, criticizing a system that has sent billions of dollars to insurance companies while doing far too little to make care actually affordable.
“I want to give billions of dollars directly to the people,” Trump said. “We want you to go out and buy your own health insurance.” Lowering health-care costs remains a kitchen-table issue for working families.
The White House understands that real affordability won’t come from propping up a broken system with temporary subsidies. It will come from true reform that gets to the root of the government-caused problem.
Time and time again, the administration has demonstrated its belief in how one of the most effective ways to lower drug costs is to finally make lower-cost generic medications accessible to the patients who need them.
This debate received a jolt when entrepreneur Mark Cuban publicly urged the Trump administration to waive the steep regulatory fees that generic manufacturers face when seeking approval. These fees can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per application, slowing down competition and keeping drug prices high.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. understands this. That is why his agency released a model to cut prescription drug prices in 2025. HHS has dedicated months to coordinating with the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division to restore competition in markets where brand-name manufacturers have used patent tactics to block challengers.
While this HHS model will without question propose further solutions to this glaring problem, the administration has already made many strides to stop brand-name companies from blocking their marketplace competition.
For example, the FTC challenged more than 200 improper patent listings last year, each of which helped keep lower-cost generics off pharmacy shelves. These unscrupulous delay tactics have translated directly into higher prices for seniors, caregivers, and patients managing chronic disease.
However, even when safe, effective generics exist, too many insurance plans — including government-sponsored plans — bury them deep in their formularies (the list of prescriptions they cover), or worse — they don’t cover them at all. I hear from patients with stories like: “My doctor prescribed the generic, but my plan forces me onto a more expensive brand-name drug.”
That makes no sense. Generic medications are a key way to lower patients’ costs. Generics are up to 85 percent cheaper than branded medications. A huge portion of patients – more than 90 percent – pay less than $20 for a generic prescription, compared to roughly 60 percent for branded drugs. The average generic copay is just $6; branded drugs can run 10 times more.
The competition they create pushes prices down for everyone. A single generic entrant lowers the price of a drug by roughly 30 percent while five generics reduce prices by about 85 percent.
Generic medications play an especially important role for people managing chronic conditions like COPD, asthma, and other respiratory illnesses — diseases where daily maintenance therapy prevents hospitalizations and keeps patients stable. These include long-established treatments such as tiotropium and other maintenance therapies that have been studied for years and are recognized by the FDA as clinically equivalent to their branded counterparts. When plans don’t give these generics preferred placement, patients are pushed toward pricier options even though lower-cost, effective alternatives already exist.
The coming weeks present an important opportunity. Instead of relying on short-term policy extensions that leave patients with the same affordability challenges, Washington should focus on reforms that lower costs across the entire system. This should include clearing the path for generics, promoting competition, and ensuring that insurance formularies — especially in Medicare — don’t hide low-cost options behind unnecessary barriers.
It’s time to move beyond temporary fixes and deliver solutions that actually help families.
Terry Wilcox is the co-founder and CEO of Patients Rising.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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