WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) announced the submission of comments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in response to the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM), “Medicare Program; Ensuring Safety Through Domestic Security With Made in America Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and Essential Medicine Procurement by Medicare Participating Hospitals.”
CPA and its members across the healthcare sector strongly support the Trump administration’s efforts to rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity for generic pharmaceuticals and other personal protective equipment, emphasizing that the United States remains dangerously dependent on foreign supply chains – particularly from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – for far too many of our citizens’ essential healthcare products used today.
CPA’s comments highlight persistent vulnerabilities exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, including severe shortages of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), and ongoing reliance on imports for key items such as nitrile gloves and other PPE. CPA notes that these structural weaknesses continue to contribute to supply disruptions, rising costs, and risks to patient safety.
“America’s healthcare system cannot remain dependent on fragile and subsidized foreign supply chains for generic pharmaceuticals and other critical countermeasures that are fundamental to patient care,” said Jon Toomey, president of CPA. “CMS has a timely opportunity to use Medicare’s purchasing power to rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity, strengthen supply chain resilience, ensure higher standards of quality and safety for patients, and bolster our national security against such critical industries propped up and heavily subsidized by the Chinese state military apparatus.”
CPA strongly supports the rulemaking, and recommends focusing on the following objectives:
- Ensure that Medicare payment policies fully reflect the real cost of domestic manufacturing
- Align demand-side incentives with production realities
- Establish clear, enforceable definitions of “domestically manufactured” products
- Streamline reporting requirements
- Phase implementation in line with existing U.S. manufacturing capacity
- Expand payment incentives to cover a broader range of essential medical supplies
CPA’s comments further emphasize that domestic procurement policies should be treated as a patient safety measure, citing evidence of quality failures and supply disruptions linked to foreign manufacturing. CPA and its members urge CMS to adopt a comprehensive approach that includes both demand-side incentives and complementary production-side policies to support long-term investment in U.S. manufacturing.
CPA’s formal comment submission outlines detailed policy recommendations across generic pharmaceuticals, essential medical devices and other PPE, including a proposed tiered framework for pharmaceutical supply chains based on domestic production depth.
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