NAM Releases Roadmap for Lowering Healthcare Costs for Manufacturers
Today, the NAM released a roadmap detailing manufacturers’ policy priorities for lowering healthcare 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 healthcare costs and protect manufacturers’ ability to offer vital healthcare 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 healthcare 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 healthcare 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 healthcare 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 healthcare 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.
