Heading into November, voters rank healthcare costs as their single biggest economic worry. For the first time since Kaiser Family Foundation began tracking the question in 2018, a majority now say they’re specifically anxious about affording their prescriptions. And right now, voters trust Democrats more than Republicans to do something about it, by roughly 12 points, and by a similar margin on drug affordability specifically.
Republicans can close that gap. We have the ideas that actually work, such as transparency and free-market competition rather than Washington price-setting, and trade leverage instead of surrendering to foreign governments that have spent decades exploiting American drug innovation.
I’ve made that case from a medical practice in Ohio and from battlefields abroad, and I’ve watched it hold up under pressure: Lowering costs for American families requires exposing who’s actually driving costs up, at home and abroad.
For example, the Better Deals and Lower Prices Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump, forced pharmacy benefit managers, the middlemen who have long operated in the dark, to give employers and patients real visibility into the rebates and fees that have quietly driven up the price of prescriptions. The bipartisan No Surprises Act, on the other hand, mandates payment disputes between insurers and doctors be settled by a neutral arbiter weighing real market factors, not by Washington setting a fixed rate.
Both efforts rest on the same principle: hold the system accountable and attack what’s actually driving up costs while maintaining America’s healthcare leadership. Now America is taking on another cost driver, one that reaches past our own borders.
For years, American patients have shouldered a disproportionate share of the cost of the innovation the entire developed world relies on. Wealthy governments in Europe and elsewhere impose price controls on their own markets and squeeze steep discounts out of American drugmakers, knowing the U.S. market will make up the difference by paying more. Trump’s most-favored-nation negotiations are chipping away at that imbalance by lowering what Americans pay. But that’s only one side of the ledger. If foreign governments respond by driving their own prices down even further, the money that funds tomorrow’s cures doesn’t shift to America; it just disappears. Americans should pay less while foreign governments pay their fair share, too.
The USTRx Act can make a difference. The bill would create a chief pharmaceutical trade negotiator inside the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to identify foreign price controls and market barriers that disadvantage American patients and innovation. Our negotiators would have real leverage to make foreign governments pay their share.
Germany is the case in point happening right now. Berlin is pushing a new rebate scheme that would squeeze American drugmakers further. That’s precisely the kind of quiet cost-shifting the USTRx Act is built to confront before foreign schemes get locked in.
Republicans leading in this effort can increase public trust. A McLaughlin & Associates poll found 72% of voters agree it’s time to make other countries pay their fair share for prescription drugs. Voters want Congress to act.
TRUMP IS RIGHT TO INVESTIGATE GERMANY — AND HE SHOULDN’T STOP THERE
Trust grows not with better talking points but with results, such as exposing pharmacy middlemen, holding insurers accountable, and getting foreign governments to pay their share. I’ve left elected office, but my fight for patients doesn’t stay behind.
The world benefits from American medicine. It’s time the world paid for it.
Dr. Brad Wenstrup, a combat surgeon and former U.S. representative from Ohio, is executive director of Americans for Health Excellence.