ALEXANDRIA, VA — Yesterday, President Trump committed a needless unforced error by signing the "Most Favored Nation" executive order, effectively green-lighting the importation of prescription drug price controls from foreign nations, including some with socialized healthcare systems.  A massive coalition of 80 conservative and free-market organizations, including the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF), strongly opposes the order.  

Below is a statement by CFIF President Jeffrey Mazzella, who encourages the White House to immediately reconsider:

"As Americans know from experience with gas shortages in the 1970s, as well as from examples like Venezuela overseas, price controls simply do not work, regardless of the product targeted or the location they’re attempted.  Prescription drug price controls are no different.  Unfortunately, the White House’s executive order imposes such a scheme right here in America, despite President Trump’s earlier State of the Union speech promise to oppose all efforts to import socialism to America.  The order introduces a so-called International Pricing Index (IPI) for U.S. drugs administered by the federal government, meaning that foreign governments’ drug price controls would suddenly control our own reimbursement rates.  

"Consequently, those nations receive far fewer new lifesaving and life-improving drugs than American consumers.  For example, 96% of all new cancer drugs over the past decade were made available to U.S. consumers.  In contrast, only 56% of those same drugs became available in Canada, only 50% became available in Japan and only 11% in Greece, as just three examples.  That’s why America outpaces European nations in terms of cancer survival rates, among other advantages.  

"The Trump Administration itself once highlighted the destructive effect of importing foreign price controls, when in 2018 its Council of Economic Advisers affirmed that, 'If the United States had adopted the centralized drug pricing policy in other developed nations twenty years ago, then the world may not have highly valuable treatments for diseases that required significant investment.'

"The United States accounts for nearly two-thirds of all new drugs introduced worldwide, and our more market-oriented system and protection of patent rights explains why.  Instead of importing foreign nations’ price control schemes and their consequences, America should be exporting our superior system to their shores.

"CFIF urges President Trump to reconsider this potentially catastrophic order while there’s still time."

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