Lowering Health Care Costs and Improving Overall Outcomes Cannot Come at a Cost to Patient Access

February 25, 2026 (WASHINGTON, D.C.) — The Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease (PFCD) released the following statement in response to the State of the Union address, during which President Trump supported codifying “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) drug pricing:

“The 194 million Americans living with multiple chronic conditions depend on consistent, timely access to the therapies that help manage their health. Ensuring these treatments are affordable is a goal PFCD strongly supports, and one that President Trump rightly elevated in his State of the Union address. Codifying MFN into law, however, would fundamentally shift the U.S. toward access delays and gaps observed in the countries that MFN pricing would emulate without any guarantees of improving affordability for patients.

“Americans living with complex, chronic conditions cannot afford the disruption and volatility MFN would bring to the U.S.-based innovation ecosystem, jeopardizing access to new therapies for cancer, autoimmune disorders, neurological conditions, and rare diseases. MFN would also import foreign benchmarks that rely on discriminatory cost-effectiveness measures like the quality-adjusted life year (QALY), a metric that systematically undervalues the lives of elderly, disabled and chronically ill patients, and that federal law explicitly prohibits in Medicare. Importing those prices means importing the discriminatory assumptions on which they are built.

"The patients most dependent on a stable, innovative therapeutic landscape are also the most vulnerable to the consequences of getting this wrong. PFCD urges Congress to avoid codifying a policy that risks undermining both American values and biomedical innovation. To deliver on President Trump’s desire to improve health care affordability, Congress must instead focus its energy on the insurance companies that stand between patients and their medicines while continuing to drive up premiums, deductibles, and coinsurance. We stand ready to work with policymakers toward affordability solutions that keep patient access, outcomes and medical progress at the center."

For more health and policy stakeholder perspectives on MFN, please visit www.fightchronicdisease.org/mfn.