Will European patients have to pay more for their medication? As Donald Trump fights to reduce healthcare costs for patients in the United States, concern has grown across Europe. His plan to align US drug prices with the lowest prices paid by other developed countries, a policy he has referred to as “most favored nation” (MFN) pricing, has raised fears that accessing medical products in Europe could become more difficult as an indirect consequence.
“MFN pricing may appear to be a domestic measure, but in reality it would have global consequences,” stated Alexander Natz, secretary general of the European Confederation of Pharmaceutical Entrepreneurs (EUCOPE), a Brussels-based trade association representing compact and medium-sized pharmaceutical companies. By indexing the prices of medicines sold in the US to the lowest prices available in comparable economies abroad, the pharmaceutical companies’ profits in the US would drop dramatically.
The US market accounts for the vast majority of the industest’s profits, due to its exceptionally high drug prices. According to a 2024 Rand study, funded by the US government, the average price of prescription medicines, excluding generic drugs, was 4.22 times higher in the US than in most other member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
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