Americans are innovators, tirelessly working to create a better world. It’s in our DNA to take risks and create solutions to the biggest problems. We dominate the world with our bold, creative ideas, not brute force or centralized control. Likewise, we do things our way, blazing our own trails. Especially in technology, science, and medicine. President Donald J. Trump and his Administration are working around the clock to reinstate this belief and confidence in our country. Yet, his “Most Favored Nation” drug pricing policy—which the Administration recently announced is beginning to be implemented—risks the medical miracles that have made me, and countless other patients, survive and live meaningful lives.
I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at 23, just out of college, with the life ahead of me now thrown into chaos. It was 1993. Just 10 years earlier, the United States enacted a law that reinvented yet another industry: how medicine was developed and cures accessed. Not coincidentally, 1993 was also the same year the first medicine proven to slow the inevitable progression of MS became available. There are now a dozen MS treatments, four of which I have needed to keep me out of dependency and into being a productive father, husband, and taxpayer.
The United States unleashed a medical miracle machine that not only saved my life but also produced thousands of treatments that helped millions of others. It also upended the then-reigning dominance of European pharmaceutical manufacturers. America took the lead in global medical innovation. We’ve never looked back.
President Trump today is correcting world trade imbalances, exposing freeloading partners, and unapologetically defending American interests.
For these same reasons, you might think the current administration would be the last to embrace so-called MFN price fixing.
MFN or “Most Favored Nation,” like the “Inflation Reduction Act,” is a deceptive name and a backward idea. In short, it’s a cure worse than the disease.
MFN infects the world’s greatest innovators with opaque price schemes. MFN puts central planners in control of what diseases are favored, masks hidden subsidies, and devalues human dignity. MFN is an apology for winning, shackles us to European socialism, and says American exceptionalism was wasted on me. Most dangerous of all, it will drive innovation overseas and into China.
I am not the only one who knows this. Our latest survey found that an overwhelming majority of likely voters from across the political spectrum are concerned about MFN and the discriminatory values, like the quality-adjusted life year (QALY), upon which it is based. Respondents indicated concern over the rationing of care (85 percent), reduction of patient and doctor choice (88 percent), and deprioritization of elderly and disabled patients that would come with MFN (78 percent).
In fact, respondents were so concerned by the threat of MFN, that over 90 percent were supportive of policymakers establishing safeguards to ensure U.S. health agencies don't set policy based on the value assessment. Meanwhile, over 76 percent support alternative strategies to coping with high drug prices—like regulating the anticompetitive drug middlemen that often drive up costs for patients—over embracing un-American values.
Addressing the drug middlemen and now-broken 340B program—which benefits hospitals over patients—would be a vital first step to bringing down drug costs without implementing foreign values that put vulnerable patients last.
My family and I (and our budget) know that medical breakthroughs are not free. This is a reality of an ecosystem that rewards risk-takers for their discoveries...for a limited time. Then those discoveries are subject to competition from generic drugs, which regularly reduce prices by 80-90%. That delicate balance both solves the biggest health problems and brings relief to the most patients—the classic American win-win.
The American system is so miraculous it’s almost impossible to grasp, yet easily taken for granted. Costs are checked by competition, not government bureaucracy. Hardly perfect, but it’s a competition that propels innovation instead of stifling it.
MFN is a surrender of American dominance, buys into the myth that the government can set prices –be it for groceries or medicine—and sacrifices the hopes of patients like me.
Mr. President, don’t give up on American greatness and the miracle responsible for my life and the hopes of millions of patients. Since when does America take orders from Europe, undercut our own success, or apologize for American enterprise? Using MFN to address what should be a trade issue will ensure patients ultimately have to pay the price.
John Czwartacki is a veteran of the first Trump administration, more than 30-year multiple sclerosis patient, and patient advocate.
