This past Monday, Donald Trump and Mark Cuban stood next to each other and announced a deal to put more than 600 generic prescription drugs on a federal price-comparison website. Cuban’s company, Cost Plus Drugs, is supplying most of the listings and Amazon Pharmacy and GoodRx are providing the rest.
If you are wondering why a Democratic congressman from rural Maine is writing about this, it is because of what happened in that room, not what was on the podium.
Mark Cuban endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024 and President Trump spent months attacking him on Truth Social. By every rule of how American politics is supposed to work in 2026, these two men were not supposed to be in the same building, let alone sharing a microphone. And yet there they were, announcing something useful for the country.
I have spent eleven years as a legislator. I have grown tired, as I have said elsewhere, of the incivility and the plain nastiness that have become normal in our politics. I am leaving Congress at the end of this term because I want to be a husband, a father, and a son more than I want to keep fighting in a building where the fighting?too often gets in the way of doing?anything?good?for the people who sent us there.
So when I saw the Trump-Cuban announcement, my first reaction was not about prescription drugs. It was that two adults who had every political reason to despise each other decided?to set it aside and do something together that could benefit a lot of people.?As Mark Cuban put it, Republicans want cheaper drugs, independents want cheaper drugs, Democrats want cheaper drugs.?
That is the part of this story that deserves attention.
Now, about the policy itself. I am not going to pretend it is more than it is. TrumpRx is a price-comparison website. It does not dispense medication, and cash purchases through the site generally do not count toward a patient’s insurance deductible or out-of-pocket maximum, which means most Americans with comprehensive coverage will not necessarily see savings.?
In an ideal world, a serious Congress would take this announcement as a starting point and write durable law around it that expands access to affordable prescription drugs for more Americans. I do not know if this Congress is capable of any of that. I hope I am wrong.
But here is what I keep coming back to:?while?social media is flooded with criticisms of Cuban for working with the president and the obvious business upside for himself,?for?the uninsured?person?in my district paying cash for their blood pressure medication, a generic atorvastatin priced under five dollars on a federal website is not nothing.
