Price Controls Aren't Medicaid Reform

Property rights conservatives oppose anything that would inject government price controls, including those known as “most favored nation,” into the Medicaid program (or any other part of our health system). Energy & Commerce and other House and Senate lawmakers should actually reform Medicaid, not import foreign socialists' price controls.

Conservatives for Property Rights has consistently opposed this approach and all government price controls because they threaten both private property rights and medical progress that benefits American consumers and patients suffering from serious diseases.

To import foreign socialized price controls into America’s largest price-controlled program, Medicaid, would do nothing to help Americans afford their medicines. Rather, it likely would reduce U.S. patients’ access to lifesaving medicines. Moreover, MFN would effectively import metrics that undervalue human life—the exact opposite of the QALY ban the E&C Committee passed in the Protecting Health Care for All Patients Act last Congress.

Medicaid already gets the “best price” for prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical innovators are required to provide Medicaid rebates averaging more than 50 percent. Yet, MFN would raise costs and worsen existing market distortions that socialized medicine abroad and, to a lesser extent in U.S. government health programs, already cause. MFN would exacerbate the perverse incentives that cause 340B to drive up health costs. MFN very well could force many manufacturers to pay Medicaid for drugs. Talk about market distortion!

MFN price controls are tantamount to a tax on an industry that supports 5 million good-paying American jobs. The net effect of MFN in Medicaid will be to kill American jobs and American innovation, particularly for addressing the most acute conditions in the Medicaid and Medicare populations. This risks handing U.S. biopharma leadership over to China.

A better alternative for budget reconciliation is actual Medicaid reform. Wrest savings by disqualifying able-bodied people from Medicaid and imposing a work requirement. Restore pre-Obama-Biden qualifications for Medicaid, which weren’t exactly stingy.

Government price controls are a nonstarter. They don’t belong in American health care. Market-based competition and consumer choice are the prescription for curbing costs while improving quality and fostering innovation. Say no to MFN, no to any form of socialized medicine.

Special 301 Report Should Put America First

Conservatives for Property Rights has sent Congress a clear message: the 2025 Special 301 Report must be restored to its rightful purpose — identifying and confronting foreign threats to American intellectual property.

Under the weak leadership of the Biden administration and a complacent Congress, this once-powerful trade tool has been systematically watered down. This gives foreign IP thieves a free pass to steal from American businesses without consequence.

The Special 301 Report was designed to call out and hold accountable nations that undermine American innovation. Yet, for the past four years, Congress has stood idly by as the Biden administration's globalist, America-last approach weakened its impact.

Instead of taking decisive action to protect American jobs, lawmakers have allowed USTR to soften its language — failing to expose the worst offenders and emboldening those who wish to exploit our IP laws.

CPR's letter to Congress urges lawmakers to ensure the 2025 report is a "return to the clear, unequivocal assertions of earlier editions" — reinforcing America's commitment to strong IP protections, in line with President Trump's new "America First Trade Policy."

Congress must act. CPR calls on lawmakers to hold USTR accountable and demand the reinstatement of tough scrutiny on compulsory licensing and other IP abuses in the 2025 Special 301 Report. America's leadership in innovation depends on it.

Please read the full letter we sent to the Senate and House below:

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The Honorable John Cornyn and The Honorable Raphael Warnock

Chairman and Ranking Member

Senate Finance International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness Subcommittee

219 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Adrian Smith and The Honorable Linda Sánchez

Chairman and Ranking Member

House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade

1139 Longworth House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Chairmen Cornyn and Smith and Ranking Members Warnock and Sanchez:

For nearly 40 years, Congress has tasked the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative with compiling an annual Special 301 report to identify foreign countries that routinely violate American firms' intellectual property.

But under the Biden administration, the USTR deliberately weakened the language of the Special 301 report. The past four annual reports have watered down a number of key U.S. positions on IP rights. This effectively invites other nations to infringe on Americans' patented, copyrighted, and trademarked technologies and products.

With the arrival of a new administration, Congress has a chance to press for wholesale reform -- restoration, rather -- that ensures the Special 301 report once again fulfills its mandate. Conservatives for Property Rights, as an organization dedicated to defending private property as both a fundamental right and a profound social good, respectfully urges you to make sure the 2025 report adheres to its statutory purpose.

Crucially, bringing the Special 301 Report back in line with congressional intent would complement President Trump's newly issued "America First Trade Policy." The Trump administration has made clear that it intends to take a strong stand against unfair trade practices that harm American industries and workers. The Policy explicitly directs the USTR to "undertake a review of, and identify, any unfair trade practices by other countries and recommend appropriate actions to remedy such practices." Furthermore, it calls for the USTR to "review existing United States trade agreements and sectoral trade agreements and recommend any revisions that may be necessary or appropriate."

The USTR does not need to wait for new processes to be established to begin this important work. The Special 301 Report already provides a structured mechanism for identifying unfair IP-related trade practices around the world and can help lay the groundwork for a fairer, more balanced trade policy that protects America's most innovative industries.

Specifically, the 2025 report should return to the clear, unequivocal assertions of earlier editions, such as the 2020 report's straightforward declaration that "IP infringement undermines U.S. competitive advantages in innovation and creativity, to the detriment of American businesses and workers." This is the statement of principle upon which the entire issue hinges, and the institution of a mealy-mouthed alternative under the Biden administration has created the impression that America has gone soft on IP rights.

The stakes couldn't be higher. IP-reliant industries drive the U.S. economy. A report from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office found that, in 2019 just before the pandemic, 127 IP-intensive industries contributed $7.8 trillion in economic output and accounted for 33% of jobs nationwide. The 2024 Special 301 Report lacks the language from previous reports about this economic impact.

In addition to this language, the report must restore long-standing positions concerning compulsory licensing of U.S. patents -- the practice of foreign governments authorizing their domestic industries to make use of American patents without the permission of the patent-holders. Long understood as a last-resort emergency measure, compulsory licensing is now deployed willy-nilly to infringe on the rights of firms that hold valuable intellectual property they developed at great risk and cost.

Recent Special 301 reports have essentially removed all mention of compulsory licensing. Just last year, Colombia issued an unprecedented compulsory license for dolutegravir, a vital drug used in the treatment of HIV. The Colombian government took this extraordinary step despite repeated efforts by the IP owner to reach an agreement to distribute dolutegravir in the country without infringement of its patents. Indeed, Colombian government officials have declared that more compulsory licenses are coming, and have stated that Colombia will "lead or support the position of abolishing patents." This is the kind of abuse that the USTR used to call out in Special 301 reports, but ceased to do so under the Biden administration.

Biden officials planted the seeds of this new status quo during the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2021, then-USTR Katherine Tai announced that "[t]he [Biden] Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines." Tai claimed the "extraordinary circumstances" of "a global health crisis" as justification for the move.

But in reality, there was no need for such an extreme, precedent-breaking measure. Vaccine patent owners were already inking scores of voluntary licensing deals with manufacturers in the developing world. And both developed and developing countries quickly accumulated a glut of vaccine doses. The United States ended up sitting on 82 million unused vaccine doses, and countries around the world halted production due to a lack of demand. To date, not a single country had notified the WTO that it planned to utilize the waiver to make its own vaccine.

Nevertheless, proponents seized on the USTR's formulation to declare innumerable additional "extraordinary circumstances" supposedly justifying waivers or compulsory licensing. One year after Ambassador Tai's announcement, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for the removal of "intellectual property constraints" in order to enable "a rapid and fair renewable energy transition." His logic is backward. New technologies are the result of strong IP rights and a pro-innovation economy. Technologies like carbon capture and storage, alongside other innovations key to both sustainable and established energy production, benefit greatly from IP protections that incentivize innovation.

The 2025 report must also offer an accurate and unflinching account of the countries where burdensome patenting restrictions make U.S. engagement impractical. The 2020 Special 301 report -- the last before the Biden administration took office -- addressed this issue head-on. In Argentina, for instance, the USTR noted that "unduly broad limitations on patent-eligible subject matter … have interfered with the ability of companies investing in Argentina to protect their IP and may be inconsistent with international norms."

While Argentina remained on the Priority Watch List in the 2024 report, all mention of patentability criteria went missing. This change did not go unnoticed: the Argentine Chamber of Pharmaceutical Laboratories gleefully noted that the report "no longer includes criticism regarding the existence of undue limitations on the patentability of pharmaceutical and biotechnological products in Argentina, nor questions to the patentability guidelines in force since 2012."

The clear message: the United States no longer stands in defense of its citizens' IP rights. This posture effectively signals to international actors that they are free to infringe on American IP with impunity -- and de facto U.S. approval.

Were this lackadaisical attitude to continue at the USTR, the firms that have been responsible for so much American innovation and wealth creation would have a much harder time justifying the expense and risk of developing new technologies. If they lose confidence in the security of IP protection, the result will be the withering of dynamic industries on which so many American jobs depend.

That is why a strong Special 301 report is so important. We urge Congress to use its oversight authority to ensure that the USTR restores consideration of compulsory licensing and other urgent IP matters that the Biden administration eliminated from or downplayed in its Special 301 reports.

The world needs to see a clear restatement in the 2025 report of the fundamental U.S. commitment to IP protection -- alongside detailed descriptions of specific cases of abuses abroad. After four years of weak-willed indifference, it's time for the USTR to send a message of warning to those seeking to undermine the basis of American innovation.

Sincerely,

James Edwards

Executive Director

Conservatives for Property Rights

Red Tape for Red Tape Makers

The robust economy under the first Trump administration was aided in part by an executive order that directed federal departments and agencies to eliminate two existing regulations for every one new one.

Its Trump II successor is executive order 14192, “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation.” This new and improved version requires agencies to get rid of at least 10 existing rules, regulations or guidance for every new rule, regulation or guidance issued. The E.O. says this exercise must translate into marked net savings, with regulatory costs of “significantly less than zero” in the current, 2025 fiscal year.

The latest red tape on the red tape imposed by red-tape factories known as federal bureaucracies has gotten some favorable nods, such as by Susan E. Dudley in Forbes and Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The new E.O. could take a bite out of the Administrative State. It does some housekeeping, such as empowering the Office of Management and Budget to hold bureaus accountable through use of uniform estimates and measurements of regulatory costs. And any item of red tape must have appeared in the most recent Unified Regulatory Agenda.

The effects of the changes (good-government improvements) this E.O. makes could prove to be quite constraining on the Administrative State’s minions. Consider an attorney’s explanation of the impact to 401kSpecialist:

“‘To put things in some perspective, in 2024 alone the Department of Labor issued or proposed three significant new ERISA-related regulations (a regulation on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, a regulation requiring lifetime income illustrations in participant disclosures, and a proposed regulation on fiduciary advice),’ Ari Sonneberg, Chief Marketing Officer and Partner at The Wagner Law Group, wrote in a Law Alert today. ‘The cost to the Department of Labor for just three new regulations under the Trump Administration will be the elimination of 30 existing regulations.’ ”

Multiply that math by all the regulatory agencies in Washington, then think about the scale of Elon Musk’s DOGE efficiency measures and reduction in the federal workforce. Next, factor in the ramifications of the Loper Bright elimination of judicial deference to bureaucrats’ statutory interpretations.

That means the Administrative State may actually be reined in over the next four years.