- 11 May 2018 23:38
#14913974
While running for office a Trump promise was: “When it comes time to negotiate the cost of drugs, we are going to negotiate like crazy,” Trump told a crowd in Exeter, New Hampshire in February 2016. “The drug companies probably have the second or third most powerful lobby in this country. They get the politicians, and every single one of them is getting money from them.” and “You go see this, lobbyists, almost guarantee they produce, with me, won’t happen folks,” Trump told voters in Lacrosse, Wisconsin in April 2016. “With me, pharmaceuticals, you know there’s a bad bidding process on pharmaceuticals. There’s a bad bidding process for everything.”
However
One of the largest donors to Trump’s re-election campaign is CVS Health Corp, which has a financial interest in keeping the government away from drug price negotiations. Health companies spent millions to contribute to Trump’s inauguration committee.
In 2015 Medicare spent $110,000,000,000 on Big Pharma's drugs. The law that established Medicare Part D, which provides prescription drug plans, prevents the government from negotiating with Big Pharma what prices they will pay. The government pays what prices Big Pharma serves up.
The odds and ends and window dressing that Trump proposed today does NOT permit Medicare to enter a bidding process with Big Pharma over drug prices. The president is apparently abandoning his campaign promise to authorize Medicare to negotiate directly with drug companies to lower prices.
Trump, who touts himself as a business genius, has just decided to grant Big Pharma a $110,000,000,000 gift without any negotiating whatsoever
.
Unsurprisingly drug makers’ stocks jumped immediately after Trump's cave to Big Pharma speech, as did the stocks of pharmacy benefit managers, the “middlemen” who Mr. Trump said had gotten “very, very rich.” The NASDAQ Biotechnology Index climbed 2.68 percent on Friday, and companies that make expensive specialty drugs saw their stocks rise, including Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Biogen. Pharmacy benefit managers Express Scripts closed up by 2.59 percent, and CVS Health finished up at 3.17 percent.
The pattern of Trump favoring corporate America to the disadvantage of America's citizens continues unabated.
However
One of the largest donors to Trump’s re-election campaign is CVS Health Corp, which has a financial interest in keeping the government away from drug price negotiations. Health companies spent millions to contribute to Trump’s inauguration committee.
In 2015 Medicare spent $110,000,000,000 on Big Pharma's drugs. The law that established Medicare Part D, which provides prescription drug plans, prevents the government from negotiating with Big Pharma what prices they will pay. The government pays what prices Big Pharma serves up.
The odds and ends and window dressing that Trump proposed today does NOT permit Medicare to enter a bidding process with Big Pharma over drug prices. The president is apparently abandoning his campaign promise to authorize Medicare to negotiate directly with drug companies to lower prices.
Trump, who touts himself as a business genius, has just decided to grant Big Pharma a $110,000,000,000 gift without any negotiating whatsoever
.Unsurprisingly drug makers’ stocks jumped immediately after Trump's cave to Big Pharma speech, as did the stocks of pharmacy benefit managers, the “middlemen” who Mr. Trump said had gotten “very, very rich.” The NASDAQ Biotechnology Index climbed 2.68 percent on Friday, and companies that make expensive specialty drugs saw their stocks rise, including Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Biogen. Pharmacy benefit managers Express Scripts closed up by 2.59 percent, and CVS Health finished up at 3.17 percent.
The pattern of Trump favoring corporate America to the disadvantage of America's citizens continues unabated.
"Society in those days was a perfectly competent, perfectly complacent, ruthless machine." Virginia Woolf 1897
- By FiveofSwords
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