JudgeMental said:

Oregon’s Bay Area is feeling annoyed.

Nothing says “greatest victory for patient affordability” quite like raising drug prices. According to new data from health care research firm 3 Axis Advisors, first reported by Reuters, at least 350 medications are slated for price hikes in the U.S. in 2026, up from more than 250 drugs last year. The median increase? A tidy 4 percent, because apparently inflation is only “fake news” when it’s politically inconvenient.

This is happening, of course, right as the Trump administration is busy congratulating itself for its “most favored nation” (MFN) drug pricing policy. Under that plan, more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies voluntarily agreed, after being threatened with tariffs, to sell certain drugs to the U.S. at the lowest price they offer anywhere in the world. Trump has called it “the greatest victory for patient affordability in the history of American health care,” which is a bold claim given, well… the price hikes.

Some drugs expected to rise in price are made by companies that signed on to the MFN deal, including Pfizer and GSK. But don’t worry, the administration says a shiny direct-to-consumer platform called TrumpRx is coming in early 2026, to facilitate charging patients more for their medication.

There’s a catch the press conferences skip: the MFN pricing deals only apply to Medicaid. Most Americans are on commercial insurance plans, which means they’re largely excluded from the supposed savings. And since Medicaid already guarantees the lowest price offered to any commercial payer, MFN pricing may amount to little more than a rebranding exercise, like swapping pricing for affordability.

Reuters also notes the projected increases don’t even factor in the usual smoke-and-mirror rebates to pharmacy benefit managers, the same middlemen who help drugmakers keep list prices sky-high while everyone pretends no one’s responsible.

Economists have been blunt about what’s really going on. The Centre for Economic Policy Research argues the root problem isn’t foreign pricing or insufficient branding, but patent monopolies, which MFN pricing doesn’t touch, negotiations don’t challenge, and press releases can’t wish away.

So as the White House celebrates patriotic drug companies and prepares a logo-ready rollout, hundreds of medications are quietly getting more expensive. Turns out you can’t lower prices by applauding monopolies, even if they “love our country.”

Yet another; perfect, SNAFU.