Medicare Drug Exemptions Lift Trump’s Pharma Holdings

At the end of 2025, Trump’s pharmaceutical holdings reached as much as $56.2 million, including up to $39.1 million in stock in companies benefiting from exemptions that can keep costly drugs out of Medicare price negotiations. A congressional Democratic report says the portfolio bought shares in companies benefiting from the exemptions before President Donald Trump signed the law expanding them.

The holdings and the carveout

The Joint Economic Committee’s minority arm released its report Friday. It said Trump’s pharmaceutical holdings rose from a maximum reported value of $1.7 million in 2024 to as much as $56.2 million at the end of 2025.

Committee Democrats analyzed Trump’s financial disclosures and found up to $2.55 million in purchases of shares in companies benefiting from the exemptions on three dates before the legislation became law in July 2025. On July 1, 2025, the day the Senate passed the bill, the portfolio bought as much as $950,000 in those shares. After the bill became law, it bought as much as $1 million in AbbVie stock in August 2025.

During the first eight months of 2026, the portfolio kept buying and selling pharmaceutical stocks. The report said those transactions added as much as $3.5 million in stock wealth in the sector.

What Medicare recipients pay

A law enacted under President Joe Biden allowed Medicare, for the first time, to negotiate prices for some of the costliest prescription drugs. Republicans’ 2025 tax and spending law expanded an existing exemption for drugs developed to treat rare diseases or conditions. According to healthcare research nonprofit KFF, the change can delay when certain costly drugs become eligible for negotiation—or exclude them entirely.

The carveout, also known as the orphan drug exclusion, lets drug companies keep charging prices that Medicare negotiations might otherwise have reduced. Supporters said the broader exemption would encourage development of rare-disease treatments. Critics said it lets makers of blockbuster drugs avoid negotiations that could lower costs for Medicare and its recipients.

The report estimated that Medicare beneficiaries receiving Keytruda, made by Merck, and Opdivo, made by Bristol Myers Squibb, could pay roughly $5,000 more annually than they would if Medicare negotiated prices. Trump’s portfolio holds stock in both companies. Some beneficiaries could pay thousands of dollars more for certain cancer treatments and other medications under the exemptions policy than they would under negotiated prices.

Denials and drug-price promises

Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, who leads the committee’s minority arm, called the findings “outrageous and yet typical from this president, who makes the American people foot the bill again and again for his own gains.”

Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson, said third-party financial institutions independently manage Trump’s stock and bond portfolio and denied a conflict of interest. “Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold,” Ingle said. The White House has repeatedly denied ethics issues and accused Democrats of “attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest.”

The findings came as Trump made lowering prescription drug costs a central part of his healthcare policy and struck deals with pharmaceutical companies that his administration said would make medications more affordable. Drug pricing depends on a complicated set of factors. Recent polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found most Americans think Trump is profiting from the presidency in unethical or illegal ways and is more focused on his wealth than on helping people like them.