“Most-Favored Nations” Executive Order Is a Betrayal

In his State of the Union Address, President Trump said, “We will never let socialism destroy American healthcare.”

Yet on Sunday, September 13, the president signed and released a “Most Favored Nations” Executive Order regarding prescription drugs covered under Medicare that imports socialism into American healthcare.

The president’s executive order effectively ties Medicare Part B and Part D reimbursements for medicines to the prices paid in foreign countries —what the president is calling the most-favored nation price.

The problem is that almost all the “most-favored” nations feature single-payer healthcare markets that are warped by socialist price controls.

The president’s executive order will make sweeping changes to the drug and biological supply chain in America and will have implications for manufacturers and distributors of lifesaving drugs, as well as for group purchasing organizations, hospitals, and physician clinics, among others.

Implementing the president’s executive order will dampen the financial incentive for researchers to engage in the research and development of new treatments at a time when we need them the most. It should be obvious that importing socialist price controls is inconsistent with producing new medicines in an environment of increasing research and development costs. A reduction of $2.6 billion in available R&D funding is estimated to result in one less new drug being developed.

The bottom line: Socialist price controls are harmful to patients and harmful to the American economy.

So, why would President Trump, who so recently railed against injecting socialism into American healthcare, now trumpet a system that effectively imports socialist controls?

The answer is battleground state presidential politics.

President Trump says one thing in the State of the Union Address and does something else when he realizes he needs a talking point to shore up senior citizen support in the battleground state of Florida. On July 30, he tweeted, “Drug prices will soon be lowered massively.” It’s a talking point that probably appeals to retirees in Florida. Yet the cost the president’s executive order to Americans will be measured in diminished health and lost lives.

As Americans, we are accustomed to receiving excellent healthcare and have strived to build a better healthcare system than those that exist in foreign countries, where under socialist systems people suffer without proper medications and too often die early because they lack life-saving medicines.

The president’s executive order is a betrayal of American scientists who develop miracle cures and a betrayal of Americans who need life-saving medicines.