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Today, the NAM released a roadmap detailing manufacturers’ policy priorities for lowering health care and insurance costs, after extensive conversations with companies of all sizes and sectors about the challenge high costs pose. Manufacturers “rely on a safe and healthy workforce and have a deep and enduring commitment to providing health benefits to their workers,” the NAM said.

• In 2025, 95% of manufacturing employees were eligible for employer-sponsored health insurance, with 80% choosing to participate—a testament to the value manufacturers place on offering meaningful benefits to the people who make things in America.

The roadmap: The “Prescription for a Healthy Workforce ” includes 12 doses, or recommendations, that policymakers can take to reduce health care costs and protect manufacturers’ ability to offer vital health care benefits. These include:

• Further reining in pharmacy benefit managers by delinking PBM compensation from drug list prices in the commercial market;
• Restoring the 340B program to its original intent and thereby prohibiting hospital abuse of the program, which drives health care costs up for employers;
• Expanding Health Savings Accounts, encouraging the adoption of Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements and codifying Association Health Plans;
• Securing patient access to needed prescriptions; and
• Preserving ERISA’s federal preemption and maintaining the current tax treatment of employer-sponsored insurance, so manufacturers can continue to offer health coverage without increasing taxes for themselves or their employees.

Why it’s important: Manufacturers have consistently cited rising health care and insurance costs as a top business concern in the NAM’s quarterly Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey, with small and medium-sized manufacturers being disproportionately affected.

• The rising expense of health benefits may prohibit manufacturers, especially small and medium-sized companies, from hiring additional employees, stunting American manufacturing growth.
• While there is no silver bullet to lower health care and insurance costs, these reforms collectively will lower costs meaningfully for manufacturers, their workers and their families.

The last word: “Ensuring the American people can access affordable health care and life-changing innovations will sustain employer-sponsored coverage, strengthen domestic manufacturing and support a healthier, more competitive American workforce and economy,” the NAM said.