Trump has made so many promises. He promised to “drain the swamp” – we’ve seen how that played out. He promised to protect Social Security and Medicare, and it’s now obvious that he has no intention of doing that. he promised to take care of veterans and then proceeded to place a freeze on hiring federal workers, meaning more delays and problems at the V.A. The list goes on…and on…and on.
It should therefore come as no surprise that, after accusing Big Pharma of “getting away with murder” and promising to rein in drug prices, Trump has decided to allow the industry just go ahead and keep screwing American health care consumers instead.
Drug pricing was one of the more left-leaning issues on which Donnie-boy ran his campaign, and it certainly went a long way toward his getting elected. His promise was to allow Medicare to negotiate for bulk discounts drug prices, a practice that was banned under Bush II and the scam known as “Medicare Part D.”
This week, after meeting with Big Pharma executives and (surprise!) lobbyists, he’s decided that instead of allowing the government to negotiate for lower prices as happens in every other nation on earth, a better approach will be “lowering taxes” and “getting rid of regulations.”
All of a sudden, Mr. Big Business seems to be concerned for the “little guy”:
“I’ll oppose anything that makes it harder for smaller, younger companies to take the risk of bringing their product to a vibrantly competitive market. That includes price-fixing by the biggest dog in the market, Medicare, which is what’s happening” [emphasis added].
So now, it’s Medicare that’s the problem? Drug companies with monopolies on life-saving drugs are jacking up prices 600%, 5000%, and more – and yet somehow, Medicare is at fault for price fixing.
What planet is Trump on? And what is his “new” solution?
“We’re going to be lowering taxes, we’re going to be getting rid of regulations that are unnecessary.”
Lowering taxes on one of the most profitable and predatory industries in the history of crapitalism. Eliminating regulations on an industry that routinely rushes medications and devices to market that are defective and do more harm than good.
Yes, this all makes total sense – in Trump’s upside-down, dysfunctional, and delusional world. The problem is, we’ve been doing this since Reagan, and it doesn’t work.
Not that it matters at this point – Donald has already proven himself to be a pathological liar – but just why has he caved in to Big Pharma? He’s hardly a “conventional” Republican on many issues. However, when it comes to Big Business and the interests of big corporations, he is textbook GOP all the way.
In retrospect, we should all have seen this coming. His choice for Health Secretary, Tom Price, is more corrupt than Boss Tweed and Warren Harding combined, and firmly in the back pocket of Big Pharma. His pick to head the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, has sworn to “end Medicare as we know it” and turn it all over to predatory, for-profit corporations.
And Trump himself has no loyalty to anything or anyone other than the corporate billionaire class.
Should we have expected anything different?
