In the debate over how to address high drug costs for U.S. consumers, President Donald Trump pointed the finger at Big Pharma, blaming it for the price Americans pay for medications. In a letter to drug manufacturers earlier this summer, Trump demanded that they take a series of steps to lower the cost of drugs.
“If you refuse to step up, we will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices,” he wrote. “Americans are demanding lower drug prices, and they need them today.”
And an NHJournal/Praecones Analytica poll of Granite State voters shows they agree.
Asked who they believe is most responsible for the rising price of prescription drugs, half of the respondents said drug companies, while just 16.5 percent said the federal government, and 11 percent blamed health insurance companies.
“By a very large margin, Granite State voters view pharmaceutical companies to be most responsible for increases in the costs of prescription drugs, while the federal government and health insurance companies reap significantly less blame,” said Jonathan Klinger, head of polling for Praecones Analytica.
In the debate over America’s high drug prices — significantly higher than most other developed nations — pharmaceutical industry advocacy groups often lay the blame on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). They are third-party companies that manage prescription drug benefits on behalf of health insurers, employers, unions, and government programs, with the goal of controlling costs.
It’s apparently not working.
“The proportion who view groups like health care providers and pharmacy benefit managers as primarily responsible for rising drug prices is statistically indistinguishable from zero,” Klinger noted.
And Satya Marar, a visiting postgraduate fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, reports, “We’d pay even more if private health plans didn’t pool patients together and collectively bargain on drug prices through intermediary PBMs.”
The poll was taken in May, the same time Trump issued an executive order targeting consumer drug prices and demanding the pharmaceutical industry change how it charges Americans for the medications they need.
New Hampshire has been ranked the healthiest state for the third year in a row by the United Health Foundation, and its healthcare system consistently ranks as one of the best.
One reason may be the state’s relative affluence. Just 25 percent of respondents said they’ve had financial difficulty affording a prescription, lower than the 35 to 50 percent often reported across the country.
At the same time, rising healthcare costs in the state have become such a concern, the New Hampshire Insurance Department (NHID) has issued a letter to carriers participating in the state’s individual health insurance market, “urging them to review and revise their 2026 premium rate filings in light of emerging policy and economic developments since initial submissions were made in June.”
That may be part of the reason 87 percent of Granite Staters agree that drug companies should lower the cost of medications.
And more than 70 percent of respondents believe the pharma industry’s flood of advertising for brand-name drugs is also pushing up prices. “Pharma advertisers have kicked off 2025 with a bang, with the top 10 spenders throwing almost 30 percent more money behind their TV commercials in the first quarter compared to the same period a year ago,” Fierce Pharma reports.
Fewer than half (43 percent) of respondents use private health insurance, a significantly lower percentage than the national average of 65 percent in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
That may reflect the fact that New Hampshire has the second-highest median age in the country (only Maine is higher), and why 33 percent of respondents are Medicare customers.
