Publications like STAT are reporting that there’s a big gap between what the administration of President Donald Trump said about TrumpRx.gov before it launched and how the site really works.
But early usage figures suggest that the site is still a force to be reckoned with.
A review of web traffic data compiled by Similarweb shows that, in terms of attracting traffic, the site is lagging far behind Ro.com — a telehealth services and anti-obesity drug provider — but crushing the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company’s CostPlusDrugs.com site.
TrumpRx.gov also appears to be getting about four times as much traffic as Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk is getting for its Novocare.com direct-to-consumer sales website.
What it means: TrumpRx.gov is not having a huge, noticeable impact on the U.S. prescription drug market, but it’s big enough that it still has a chance to have an impact.
The backdrop: Trump administration officials talked about TrumpRx.gov for months and implied that it would be the equivalent of an outlet mall for prescription drugs, offering consumers a way to get drugs for very low prices negotiated directly with the manufacturers.
When the site opened for business Feb. 5, it offered only 43 drugs.
Instead of giving consumers a way to order drugs directly from the manufacturers, it provided a tool for printing discount coupons that consumers could take to their local pharmacies, without providing a list of the pharmacies that accept the coupons.
CVS has announced that it takes the coupons.
TrumpRx.gov still lacks an authoritative list of which pharmacies accept which TrumpRx.gov coupons.
The list of pharmacies that take the coupons appears to include Walgreens, Costco, Walmart, Sam’s Club and many supermarket family chains.
The website traffic: Similarweb, a company that uses many different strategies to get website traffic data, has data showing that TrumpRx.gov is a high-traffic site.
The site started with a huge flow of visitors in the first week and then settled down to its current traffic level of about 1 million visits per week.
During the week ending Feb. 28, the site attracted 999,530 visits.
That compared with 1.8 million visits for Ro.co, 339,223 visits for CostPlusDrugs.com and just 245,195 for Novo Nordisk’s Novocare.com site.
All of those sites lagged behind HealthCare.gov — the website that provides Affordable Care Act public exchange services in many states. HealthCare.gov attracted 2 million visits.
Figures for the full month show that TrumpRx.gov had lower pages-per-visit and time-on-site figures than CostPlusDrugs.com and Ro.co.
TrumpRx.gov had an average of 3.15 pages per visit in February and an average visit duration of 2 minutes and 8 seconds.
CostPlusDrugs.com averaged 5.37 pages per visit and 4 minutes and 4 seconds of time per visit.
Ro.co averaged 7.33 pages per visit but just 3 minutes and 44 seconds per visit.