The Most Favored Nation Drug Policy’s Impact on Access, Pharmaceutical Innovation

Amid incoming pharmaceutical tariffs and an unprecedented deal between Pfizer and the White House, pharmacy industry and drug market experts gathered for part 2 of a roundtable discussion exploring further developments on President Donald Trump’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) Drug Policy Executive Order.

The second installment of the roundtable discussion was hosted virtually on October 8, 2025, and featured the likes of legal experts, a patient access advocacy group representative, and pharmacoeconomics expert. Presented by MJH Life Sciences in partnership with a variety of its brands, including Drug Topics, this webinar series is the second of 3 parts helping all stakeholders involved understand the potential implications of the groundbreaking MFN drug policy.

“The 2025 MFN order was only introduced back in May of 2025 and it has already generated a landmark voluntary agreement with Pfizer,” stated Ronald W. Lanton III, Esq, partner at Lanton Law, to kick off the discussion. He then passed the conversation toward Melanie Whittington, PhD, managing director and head of the Center for Pharmacoeconomics at MEDACorp, to discuss the policies immediate impact on drug innovation.

READ MORE: White House Strikes Deal with Pfizer for Lower Drug Prices, Online DTC Website

“There's so much going on in the last few months, but it's clear that this trade-off exposes there are macro-level factors that are at play, besides simply the transactional price of the drug,” said Whittington. “So, do prices differ between countries? Absolutely. The economic spillovers do too. It shows also that innovators, companies that are developing new drugs, they're incentivized to work in supportive, profitable environments; and the US is a profitable, important market.”

The MFN drug policy, signed on May 12, 2025, put into motion the Trump Administration’s push to force manufacturers to develop their drugs at prices comparable with other developed nations.¹ Since the order was signed, and most recently, President Trump announced 100% pharmaceutical tariffs starting October 1 as well as a monumental deal with Pfizer to sell its medications under MFN policy implications, helping the manufacturer avoid tariffs.²

As Whittington mentioned, the deal is a clear trade-off between the 2 entities, with the White House getting a major American manufacturer to lower prices and Pfizer avoiding pharmaceutical tariffs.

Along with Lanton and Whittington, the roundtable featured experts on drug access and pricing Steve Forster, JD, partner at Jones Day’s Health Care & Life Sciences Practice, and Peter Rubin, executive director of No Patient Left Behind, a nonprofit group working for patients’ affordable access to medications. With Forster’s background in law, he discussed the “voluntary” nature of these trade-offs and how recent developments under the MFN policy differ from attempts to lower drug prices in Trump’s first term.

“What we're seeing now is this voluntary agreement to these particular MFN prices. Voluntary is a little bit loose [of a] term being used because of the tariffs and the other pressures that are being put on manufacturers to move forward with such pricing,” said Forster. “What we saw in the 2020 effort is that the executive order, similar to 2025, was issued. Secretary of HHS at the time put forth a proposed rule, and rather than going through the formal notice and comment period and getting a final rule published, what the secretary did is they said they had good cause to forego that process.”

Now, with the administration’s even stronger dedication to lowering drug prices during this term, it is achieving much more in 2025 than it did in 2020.

According to Forster, with the voluntary agreement between Pfizer and the government—as well as this executive order including all drugs and not just Medicare Part B like in 2020—the administration’s efforts this time around are significantly more developed. Before passing it to Rubin to discuss patient access, Forester concluded by explaining that right now, the White House is “using all available levers to try to proceed with getting MFN pricing in place.”

Finally, among several other topics surrounding the MFN policy, Rubin discussed his role at No Patient Left Behind and how implications backed by the executive order could hinder patients’ access to medications.

“From our perspective, we should not adopt the price controls from these foreign countries, because they result in access restrictions and declining biopharma innovator competitiveness that the US has yet to see,” he said. “For example, Australia took 2 years to allow their own kids with cystic fibrosis to get access to the drug Trikafta. What that means in reality is that instead of having a parent to take your child to the hospital and get their lungs scraped and all the mucus out, you can actually take a pill, go to school, mom or dad can go to work. To impose [those types] of access restrictions, on top of the innovation disincentives, is very dangerous.”

When it comes to access, cost, and innovations for prescription medications in the US, the MFN drug policy and its backers are attempting to forever change the distribution of drugs for US patients. As experts like those featured in the roundtable continue to provide insights on this developing policy, the general public can expect further nationwide disruptions intended to benefit American citizens. However, to what extent the policy will actually benefit the various stakeholders mentioned is still significantly uncertain.

To see the full video of the MFN drug policy roundtable, visit here.

READ MORE: Pharmacy Industry Leaders Gather to Discuss Most Favored Nation Drug Policy

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REFERENCES

1. Rogers HA. Most-favored-nation prescription drug pricing executive order: legal issues. Library of Congress. June 5, 2025. Accessed September 11, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11319

2. Carnegie TC, John SA, Shaikh H, et al. A pivotal week for pharmaceutical policy: Trump Administration advances tariff and drug pricing initiatives. Mintz. October 7, 2025. Accessed October 10, 2025. https://www.mintz.com/insights-center/viewpoints/2146/2025-10-07-pivotal-week-pharmaceutical-policy-trump-administration