We Work For Health Statement on Administration’s May 12 Executive Order on ‘Most Favored Nation’

WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 12, 2025) — We Work For Health released the following statement in response to the executive order signed Monday regarding foreign reference pricing for Medicare and Medicaid:

Controlling the cost of healthcare for Americans while preserving the innovation necessary to discover life-saving cures, transformative treatments and more than 4.9 million U.S. jobs is a true challenge.

The executive order President Trump signed Monday threatens not only to distort the innovation that makes this biopharmaceutical ecosystem possible, but to deplete it. Applying the ‘most favored nation’ trade policy to Medicaid and Medicare would import a pricing system from flawed, government-run health systems abroad that are notorious for long wait times, work stoppages and patient dissatisfaction.

Rather than institute price controls between mismatched health systems, a more effective and long-standing solution would address the bad actors in what is a unique U.S. health care system. Insurance companies and middlemen have thoroughly corrupted the U.S. healthcare landscape, inflating prices by over 50% on the cost of a drug and then pocketing rebates. Reforming this system, that the middlemen dominate through various measures, including implementing increased transparency, would create significant savings without jeopardizing patient access.

Most favored nation, if instituted, would bolster China’s increased dominance most of all. Today, the U.S. remains the global leader in innovation, but that footing is far from secure. As China and other global competitors invest to overtake that standing and the good-paying jobs that accompany it, enacting unprotected Medicare and Medicaid price controls only strengthens their hand.

Any effort to ease Americans’ health care burden is admirable, but the most-favored-nation policy is not the approach to take and it does not take into consideration the real-world cost.