President Trump Proposes Codifying MFN Drug Pricing Deals But Key Details Are Missing

In his new “Great Healthcare Plan,” President Trump has proposed to “codify” the administration’s most-favored-nation (MFN) drug pricing offers which were agreed to by drug corporations in current months. These MFN agreements are based mostly on the premise that the U.S. shouldn’t pay increased costs for prescribed drugs than the costs paid in different comparable nations, an concept that President Trump promoted in his first time period by means of varied proposals that had been ultimately not implemented.

On this second time period, the Trump administration has conducted dealmaking behind the scenes to barter most favored nation pricing agreements with particular person drug corporations, bypassing extra conventional regulatory or legislative approaches to safe these offers. The producers have agreed to make sure merchandise out there to state Medicaid packages at most favored nation pricing, to introduce new medicines at most favored nation pricing within the U.S., and to promote sure merchandise on to U.S. shoppers at discounted costs. The producers are additionally committing to extend their funding in U.S. manufacturing and in return they’ll obtain a 3-year reprieve from tariffs that may in any other case be imposed.

Typically, the small print of those agreements stay confidential, which implies that little or no is thought publicly about what precisely has been agreed to. Though worth reductions for particular medication had been highlighted at varied White House eventsthe total scope of those offers – together with which medication are topic to those agreements, what particular pricing has been agreed to, and the way MFN costs are decided – is essentially unknown.

Because of this, it’s obscure what it could imply to “codify” these offers. It’s additionally not clear what the mechanism can be for extending these offers to all Individuals. Whereas codifying most-favored-nation drug pricing could possibly be useful for bringing extra transparency to those preparations and guaranteeing that drug corporations will ship on what they’ve promised, policymakers would wish considerably extra data to show these backroom voluntary offers into regulation.