With the votes counted, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has secured the Republican nomination for Senate, dispatching incumbent Senator John Cornyn and declaring that "change was on the ballot" in Texas. With the primary settled, Paxton turns to face Democrat James Talarico in November 2026, and the issues that will define that race will not be relitigated grievances from the Republican primary. They will be decided at the kitchen table over unpaid bills, prescription bottles, and household budgets that no longer stretch to the end of the month under failed Democratic policies of the past.
Kitchen table issues are, quite literally, back on the table.
Affordability is the defining challenge of this political moment for both Republicans and Democrats. Texans are resilient and industrious, but resilience does not pay for insulin, and industriousness does not insulate working families from prices that have steadily outpaced wages. Across this state, and many states like Texas, seniors and working-class families are confronting impossible choices every single month.
President Donald J. Trump fought earnestly on this front. Under his bold and courageous leadership, his administration challenged the pharmaceutical lobby, advanced pricing transparency, and made clear that American patients deserve better than subsidizing the drug costs of the rest of the world. But progress acknowledged is not progress completed, and on the matter of prescription drug costs, the work is far from over.
Drug costs remain a serious burden for millions of American seniors and working families. Regrettably, patients continue to ration medications, split pills, or forgo treatment altogether. They are forced to weigh filling a prescription against meeting basic household obligations. This is not simply an abstraction. It is the daily reality of constituents in every Texas congressional district and those across the country, red and blue states alike.
As with many issues we face, the root cause is not so hard to identify. Pharmaceutical companies can charge Americans dramatically more than patients in Canada, Germany, Japan, or the United Kingdom pay for identical medications — drugs often produced in the very same manufacturing facility. This commercial reality means American patients are effectively underwriting the prescription drug costs of allied nations while our own seniors and most vulnerable go without.
A conservative, market-based remedy exists: personal drug importation from Tier 1 allied nations like Canada — countries whose drug safety standards are every bit the equal of our own.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, prescription drug claims account for roughly 23% of total employer health benefit costs — burdens shared by employees, businesses, school districts, and municipalities alike. Personal importation can cut those costs by 50 to 90%.
Americans could legally access the same safe, brand-name medications — often manufactured in the same FDA-inspected facilities — from Canada and other Tier 1 nations whose regulators meet or exceed our own standards. The same insulin, the same inhaler, the same cancer therapy — frequently at a fraction of the U.S. price. The effect would be immediate price competition, compelling pharmaceutical companies to confront the market discipline they have long avoided through decades of lobbying and legislatively protected pricing arrangements. This is deregulation that works for consumers, not for entrenched industry power with deep pockets.
These policies align directly with President Trump's America First drug-price agenda. The Trump Administration has repeatedly emphasized Most-Favored-Nation pricing, direct-to-consumer channels, price transparency, and ending middleman markups. Solutions built around these principles help families bypass inflated costs and push drug companies to lower prices without additional government spending or new federal mandates.
This is not just sound policy. It is also sound politics.
As the 2026 midterms approach, Democrats intend to campaign aggressively on affordability and will direct sustained attention to prescription drug costs in every competitive district in the country. Republicans who champion market solutions do not merely blunt that argument, they can remove it entirely.
With continued Republican control of the White House and Congress, the GOP has an opportunity to deliver affordability reforms that American families desperately crave and are demanding. The American people, voters, and patients are not simply looking to maintain the status quo. They are looking for solutions that are willing to change it. Prescription drug affordability is a start to those solutions.
Francisco Raul “Quico” Canseco, R-Texas, is a former member of Congress.
