President Trump's latest executive order will decimate U.S. innovation

With only a few months left in his first term, President Trump is trying to make good on his campaign promise to lower drug prices.

He has signed an executive order directing Medicare to tie reimbursements for most medicines to the lowest prices paid in other developed countries. This “foreign reference pricing,” if implemented, would purportedly give Americans cheaper drugs. But it would stifle biomedical research, leaving valuable new therapies undiscovered and dashing the hopes of patients whose conditions lack an effective treatment.

Drug discovery in the United States is diversified and c...