For years now, President Donald Trump has pushed to lower insane prices Americans have been stuck with through bad policy and bad deals under past presidents and Democrat government. One of his biggest moves in the last year has been to make Big Pharma answer for decades of ripping off Americans while addicting them to everything from opioids to antidepressants and more.
Now like any stubborn varmint, the pharma companies don’t want to change. They can’t seem to stop picking fights on this, even though they know they’ll inevitably lose to Trump. So maybe it’s not exactly surprising, but still infuriating, that drug companies are set to raise prices for 2026 by a lot. Not standard price inflation or the “progression of time and markets” type of increases either, y’all. The other kind. The greed kind.
I just want to remind y’all here, this isn’t some pet issue of a few internet weirdoes. Drug prices are a big deal to Trump. He brings it up a lot. He issues Executive Orders and policy statements, and he’s spun up a whole healthcare plan and TrumpRX on the subject. Here he is talking about it just a couple weeks back.
Watch:
And yet despite the changes and efforts by Trump and his administration, and despite overwhelming public support for such actions, Big Pharma went ahead and hiked list prices on more than 350 drugs at the start of 2026. They’ve been caught by Reuters, of all things, who reported on the whopping rates.
Some of the largest increases hit hospital and specialty medications that patients depend on and cannot easily replace or skip. Among the worst offenders: Demerol, up 289%; Fragmin, 149%; Erythrocin, 80%; Cyklokapron, 49%; Epinephrine and Marcaine, both 22%; and Linezolid, 20%.
These aren’t niche drugs for some coastal elite, either. Demerol is used in childbirth. Marcaine’s a common anesthetic. Erythrocin and Linezolid are antibiotics. Epinephrine saves lives. In other words, these everyday and emergency needs for regular people. They aren’t optional.
As if jacking up prices wasn’t bad enough, though, Big Pharma is also trying to kneecap rural Americans by killing the 340B discount program that helps small hospitals and clinics afford these drugs. It costs taxpayers nothing, keeps rural hospitals afloat, and is popular across red-state America. Big Pharma hates it, because it cuts into their ability gouge on that end while they hike prices on the other.
And these companies are also lobbying to gut incentives for insurers to negotiate lower drug prices, trying to sell Republicans on the idea those insurers are the real ‘middlemen.” Because they don’t want negotiation. They don’t want discounts. They don’t want lower prices — well not in America anyway.
Big Pharma pretends to agree that prescription prices are too high. But the reality is they aren’t on the same page as the rest of us at all, and these price hikes and their lobbying prove it.
Trump has been very clear about what he expects from the drug industry. Big Pharma says the right things, but their price hikes say something else. Looks to me like they’re sticking with the behavior that got them here in the first place. Go figure.