Since his inauguration, President Trump and his administration have taken historic steps to strengthen the American consumer and to put our hard-earned cash back in our pockets. The President has brought manufacturing back to the States, created countless opportunities, and with his flagship One Big Beautiful bill he returned billions of dollars to American taxpayers.

One area that needs more help is healthcare. Luckily for us, there is a plan. Unfortunately, that plan to help bring prescription drug prices down is flawed. The model I am referring to is the “Most Favored Nations” (MFN) model of price setting. In a nutshell, pharmaceutical companies would be required to sell their medications to American consumers at the lowest price that they sell in any other nation (the Most Favored Nations). This well-intentioned model doesn’t actually work.

The key issue with the MFN model is access. In many of the nations that MFN seeks to emulate, the supply of medications is strictly rationed, and it is often the case that the variety of medications, especially those that treat chronic or uncommon conditions, is diminished. Importing these European-style pricing schemes will likely lead to similar rationing here or higher costs.

Furthermore, setting artificial caps on investment in medical research limits innovation and medical advancements. The United States leads the world in medical research and the development of new treatments. Not only could MFN restrict access to existing medications, but it would also hamstring access to future treatments.

The other major concern with MFN is that it will not do enough to drive-down the cost of goods. Sure, manufacturers may be mandated to sell their drugs at the cheapest cost, but what about the insurers? More than that, what about the PBM middlemen that raise the price of the drugs before they even hit pharmacy shelves? Mandating price cuts at the source does not do enough to interrupt all the price-hikes that happen along the delivery route. Additionally, artificial price controls reduce competition in the market, and competition in the market is what really brings down the cost of goods. MFN will inevitably disable the mechanism of reducing costs without addressing the real mechanisms that raise them.

Here in the bootheel, accessing healthcare is not always a simple task. Our leaders have an obligation to make that task easier, not harder. We must pass policies that ensure access to the medications that Missourians and Americans across the nation rely on. While I applaud the administration for looking at how to address a complex system, I do not believe that MFN is a policy that benefits Missourians.