Patients in countries with government-run health care systems often face rationed access to innovative treatments because drugmakers are forced to accept artificially low prices. Thankfully, the U.S. has long rejected that approach. Implementing MFN would reverse this precedent by tying U.S. drug prices to those of foreign countries, threatening seniors’ access to lifesaving medications as they would begin to face the same restrictions that price controls have wrought on those abroad.
President Trump is right to call out foreign countries for freeloading off American medical innovation. However, the push by some politicians, like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, to adopt a Most Favored Nation (MFN) drug pricing model would do nothing to solve the problem—in fact, it would make it worse. Instead of ending foreign freeloading and holding other countries accountable, MFN would import the same socialist-style price controls that cripple foreign health care systems, giving our global competitors an even greater advantage while American patients, and especially seniors, pay the price.