Editor’s note: The following was written by Elliott Sterns, a flight paramedic and aspiring Nebraska nurse.
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Bad policies in Spain or Sweden shouldn’t decide whether the patients I serve as a flight paramedic across eastern Nebraska live or die.
But right now, politicians in Washington, D.C., are threatening to make that happen.
My message to them is simple: Don’t.
Do not undermine the most important feature of American medicine that saves countless lives across our state — our ability to innovate — just to save big hospital systems a few dollars.
The idea politicians are considering is called “Most Favored Nation” drug pricing, or MFN. On paper, it sounds simple: Tie the prices of American pharmaceuticals to the price caps set by foreign governments like those in Europe.
Lower prices sound great on the surface. After all, who wants to pay more money for pharmaceuticals?
I’ll tell you: The people who would suffer or possibly die without them.
Because while Americans might sometimes pay more for certain medicines than people in Europe, we also get access to more of those drugs much more quickly.
It takes years of research and billions of dollars in development to try to bring a...