TAPP Sends Letter & Issue Guide to Congress, Encouraging Opposition to "Most Favored Nation" Drug Pricing Model

The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity (TAPP) today sent a letter, along with an issue guide, to members of the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee, urging them to oppose a "Most Favored Nation"  (MFN) drug pricing model, even as President Trump is actively pushing them to impose an MFC model on prescription drugs covered by Medicaid.

In the letter, TAPP wrote, in part: 

The theory is that by passing legislation like the MFN policy, we could save hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming decade. On its face, it sounds like a great idea to have lower drug prices such as they have in other countries. The problem is that the “most favored nations” that likely would be included in the pricing index often employ a heavy-handed, socialist system of drug pricing and a range of arbitrary and market-distorting price-control policies to set the cost of medicines.

Like those socialist drug-pricing systems, MFN offers a false promise to American patients. Price controls are proven to be harmful to patients, doctors, and innovators across the world. Inflicting MFN on the domestic healthcare industry would harm Americans in need of medical care, as access to both doctors and medicines would be curtailed.

Currently, the United States is a world leader in R&D because the system of healthcare rejects price controls and encourages innovation. As you know, most new medicines are developed and launched in America. Our innovative environment is enormously beneficial to the long-term well-being of Americans.

Consequently, pharmaceutical companies devote billions of dollars each year to developing new lifesaving cures. Price controls from the MFN would deprive them of the money needed to fund their research and development efforts.

Imposing price controls on American manufacturers would stifle medical innovation, kill jobs, and have a particularly negative effect on the health of our country’s most at-risk patients. Medical innovation was especially important during the pandemic, and price controls would pull the plug on the resources needed to develop such life-saving medicines. Americans would be put at risk now and long into the future. Indeed, it is impossible to know just how many Americans would suffer as a result of curtailed innovation.

In countries where price-setting policies like MFN are in place, patients literally die waiting for access to cures that are readily available in America.

TAPP also produced an issue guide on the MFN issue. The last page, titled “How to Talk About MFN,” includes several talking points to use in policy discussions and media appearances.

Read the full letter here.

Download the issue guide here.