Medicine and Money by Anastasiia Gudantova is licensed under Unsplash
Today, Americans for Tax Reform submitted a public comment to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) regarding the request for comment pursuant to the Executive Order entitled ‘Delivering Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients.’
In May, President Trump signed the aforementioned executive order. Among a few other initiatives, this EO directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish a mechanism through which Americans can buy their drugs directly from manufacturers at a “Most-Favored-Nation” (MFN) price.
While the Administration has correctly identified the unique problems facing the American health care system – namely, wealthy countries paying artificially lower prices for prescription drugs than the U.S. and the fact that this depresses innovation and inflates our costs – MFN would not solve these problems. In fact, it would exacerbate them.
As the comments assert, in addition to doing nothing to address foreign freeloading, MFN drug pricing will reduce access to new cures and reduce U.S. global competitiveness, capitulating to China.
Implementing MFN drug pricing while foreign countries continue their systematic suppression of the value of innovative drugs is not a targeted policy change to bring about affordability, it is simply the importation of socialism.
To read ATR’s comments in full, click here or see below.
