Switzerland’s unwillingness to align with US President Donald Trump’s drug pricing rules means that patients are deprived of the latest treatments that could save their lives.
Under the US president’s ‘Most-Favored-Nation (MFN)’ model, pharmaceutical companies must sell their prescription drugs in the United States for a lower price than in other developed nations, including Switzerland.
What this basically means is that whatever a specific drug costs in Switzerland and other benchmark nations (developed, high-income countries), the U.S. wants that same low – or even lower – price.
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How is Switzerland affected by this US rule?
Drug prices are significantly lower in Switzerland than they are in the United States because they are regulated by the government – specifically, by the Federal Department of Public Health (FOPH).
Therefore, in order to be able to continue exporting its medications to the highly lucrative US market, Switzerland must either sell its drugs there at the same low prices as it does domestically and not make any profit, or else raise the prices in Switzerland in order to charge the same amount in the USA.
In the former case, they would be selling at a loss, given the high import duties.
Meanwhile, the impact of this policy is trickling down to patients in Switzerland.
According to the industry association Interpharma, “Switzerland is already feeling the effects of the US policy to lower drug prices.”
A far-reaching effect
“Since the US announced that it would also use Switzerland as a benchmark country for its pricing, Swiss pharmaceutical companies have stopped submitting about one-third of their new innovative drugs for reimbursement to Swiss health insurers,” or seeking approval by the regulatory drug company Swissmedic, Interpharma reported.
For instance, in the 18-moth-period between January 2025 and June 2026, seven of a total of 22 new medicines were not submitted to for inclusion on the official Swiss medicines list due to the MFN regime.
“As a result, patients in Switzerland do not have access to around a third of all newly developed, innovative medicines through compulsory health insurance,” the association noted.
Further, “pharmaceutical companies are already delaying or foregoing the launch of new therapies in Switzerland to avoid jeopardising their prices in the US.”
One such medication is a new breast cancer drug Giredestrant, which was manufactured by Swiss company Roche and is sold in the United States but has not been submitted for approval in Switzerland.
This approach “markedly reduces the access of patients to new therapies,” the organisation said.
Impact on individual patients
Because of this approach, many very ill people who may need life-saving medications are not able to access them directly in Switzerland, though – as is the case with Giredestrant- they are being sold abroad.
Doctors can request their importation on a case-by-case basis, but only if insurers agree to pay for them.
This process can, however also take weeks,
“For lung cancer immunotherapy, only 30 percent of the reimbursement requests were approved,” said Solange Peters, head of the oncology unit at the Vaud University Hospital (CHUV).
However, by the time insurance carriers gave their approval, some of the patients were already dead, she said.
