WASHINGTON: Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) reiterated longstanding and strong opposition to price controls on pharmaceuticals after President Trump issued a final Executive Order (EO) on Friday, September 11 to import prices from foreign nations.

CAGW President Tom Schatz made the following statement: “Adopting foreign price controls from ‘most favored nations’ (MFN) for drugs sold in the United States will be an unmitigated disaster. As CAGW said along with 79 signatories to an August 11, 2020 coalition letter expressing ‘grave concerns’ with the MFN Executive Order, ‘price controls will slow medical innovation, threaten American jobs, and undermine criticism of single-payer systems.’ The letter reminded President Trump of his pledge to ‘never let Socialism destroy American health care,’ yet this is the direction in which the EO will take the country.

“The EO not only contradicts evidence that price controls fail to lower prices, it also runs counter to the White House Statement of Administration Policy on H.R. 3, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) prescription drug proposal. The statement cited the Council of Economic Advisers’ conclusion that price controls ‘would affect as much as one third of drugs under development’ and ‘erase a quarter of the expected gains in life expectancy in the United States over the next decade.’

“It remains completely contradictory to the President’s excellent record on economic growth and deregulation during his term in office for him to be pushing a policy like MFN prices controls that undermines those achievements. We continue to urge President Trump and his administration to avoid the imposition of prices for U.S. pharmaceuticals based on the prices charged in any other country.”

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

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