The president says he wants
to lower drug prices, but Big Pharma isn't fooled.
By
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| Guess what's NOT in Trump's plan |
President Trump is said to see himself as a sort of Teddy Roosevelt. TR, however, was known as a trust buster, while DT has become known as a trust hugger.
We
recently saw the hugger in action when he held a PR event to ballyhoo 50
proposals to stop Big Pharma from gouging American consumers with monopolistic
drug pricing.
People
are rightly outraged that pill-peddling giants exploit patients who have
life-threatening diseases and routinely jack up prices on common drugs by some
10 percent a year.
As
a presidential candidate, Trump jumped on this hot issue, accusing drug makers
of “getting away with murder.”
So,
now with typical modesty, he’s revealed his plan to stop the rip-offs, calling
his 50 proposals the “most sweeping action in history to lower the price of
prescription drugs for the American people.”
Yeah,
“sweeping” — as in sweeping the problem under the White House rug.
Fifty is just a political number meant to puff-up Trump’s plan as something BIG. But as one congressional Democrat pointed out, all 50 amount to “a sugar-coated nothing pill.”
Nowhere
on that list of 50 things was Trump’s own campaign promise to use the
purchasing power of Medicare to negotiate lower prices for seniors.
Far
from feeling punished, Big Pharma itself felt it had gotten a warm presidential
hug. Drug company stock prices went up immediately after the
presidential speech.
It’s
really no surprise that Trump is letting these corporate profiteers continue
“getting away with murder.”
After all, political posturing aside, he’s stacked his administration with drug industry executives like Alex Azar, a former Eli Lily honcho who is now Trump’s secretary of health.
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| Despite efforts to block Azar, he was confirmed by the Senate |
After all, political posturing aside, he’s stacked his administration with drug industry executives like Alex Azar, a former Eli Lily honcho who is now Trump’s secretary of health.
How
revealing that Azar was standing right behind the president at the White House
media event, beaming and applauding as Trump announced… well, a lot of nothing.
Jim Hightower,
an OtherWords columnist, is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker.
He’s also editor of the populist newsletter, The
Hightower Lowdown