ATR has released a new video highlighting free market opposition to efforts to impose price controls on medical innovation and seniors in Medicare.
The video, narrated by ATR President Grover Norquist, highlights the coalition of 80 conservative, free market, libertarian groups, and activists that oppose the “most favored nation (MFN)” executive order to tie the prices we pay for medicines to foreign, socialist healthcare systems.
Foreign countries have been free riding off American medical innovation for decades through crushing price controls and other market-distorting government rules and regulations.
If we adopt these same price controls, we will do significant harm to the healthcare system. Studies have shown that countries with price controls have access to fewer innovative cures leading to healthcare shortages.
For instance, 290 new medical substances were launched worldwide between 2011 and 2018. While Americans had access to over 90 percent of these medicines, countries with price controls had limited access – the United Kingdom had access to only 60 percent of these medicines, Japan had 50 percent, and Canada had just 44 percent.
Implementing price controls through an MFN will also threaten the ability of our country to continue recovering from COVID-19. The U.S. is the best in the world when it comes to developing innovative, lifesaving, and life preserving medicines. Because of this, the U.S. is leading the way when it comes to developing COVID-19 vaccines, with several promising candidates entering the final stages of testing and clinical trials.
In addition, price controls could harm the U.S. economy. Medical innovation directly or indirectly supports 4 million jobs and $1.1 trillion in total economic impact, including jobs in every state. These jobs will be threatened by price control schemes like the MFN.
Rather than imposing price controls, lawmakers and President Trump should adopt a deregulatory, market-based approach that allows free market innovation to flourish. Moving forward, we should look to policy proposals that promote medical innovation and the development of new cures and reject efforts to impose price controls on the American healthcare system.
The full video can be found here: