By Kristy Kibler

When you live with lupus, you learn quickly waiting is not an option. Lupus is unpredictable: flares can escalate overnight, organs can be damaged quickly, and access to the right treatment at the right time can determine whether someone stays stable or ends up hospitalized. That’s why proposals to codify “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) drug pricing and other similar government price settling policies should deeply concern Colorado patients and families.

At Lupus Colorado, we work with people across the state who are managing chronic pain, fatigue and complex treatment plans while trying to work, raise families, or stay in school. For them, health policy isn’t abstract. It shows up in pharmacy delays, insurance hurdles and the fear a medication that works today may not be available tomorrow.

MFN is often framed as a simple solution: tie U.S. drug prices to those set by other countries. But many of those countries control costs by delaying, limiting, or denying access to new medicines. Importing their prices risks importing their access barriers.

For diseases like lupus, where treatment must be individualized and timely, those delays can mean irreversible harm.

The access gap is real. U.S. patients gain access to new medicines far faster and more broadly than patients in many countries used as MFN benchmarks. Delays that might be described as “cost savings” on paper translate into disease progression and fewer options for patients living with autoimmune disease.

Even federal regulators have acknowledged MFN-style policies could force patients to travel for care, switch to less effective treatments, or postpone treatment altogether.

For Coloradans, especially those in rural or mountain communities, those added burdens are significant.

Lupus has no cure, and for a community that has long faced underinvestment and limited therapeutic innovation, progress cannot come soon enough. Compared to many other serious diseases, lupus has seen far fewer breakthroughs, leaving patients with a narrow set of treatment options that often come with significant side effects. Innovation is not just a policy goal, it is what fuels hope for better days, better health and longer lives.

Policies like Most Favored Nation (MFN) pricing risk undermining progress by discouraging investment in the very research that could deliver the next generation of lupus therapies. When incentives for innovation are weakened, the result is fewer clinical trials, fewer new treatments and fewer opportunities for patients to access safer, more effective care. For those living with lupus today, and those still waiting for answers, that is not an abstract risk, it is a direct threat to their future.

There is also a serious equity issue. MFN risks importing discriminatory “value” metrics used in other countries that can devalue the lives of people with chronic illness and disability. Lupus patients should never be judged by formulas that treat their lives as worth less.

If policymakers want to improve affordability, there are better paths. Congress should focus on reforms that directly lower out-of-pocket costs, increase transparency and address the role of vertical integration throughout the for-profit health insurance industry, without rationing care or undermining the doctor-patient relationship.

Lupus is already hard enough. Colorado patients deserve policies that reduce costs and protect access, not policies that risk delays, discrimination and fewer future treatments.

Congress should reject MFN pricing and pursue patient-first solutions that preserve hope, access and innovation.

Kristy Kibler serves as chief executive of Lupus Colorado. She previously served as government relations manager at the Colorado Optometric Association, and business network manager at PeopleForBikes.