In all the babble over the “reforms” to Medicare now being debated in Congress, I have heard not one talking head refer to the reason the reforms are necessary: perhaps the single most contemptible piece of legislation ever disgorged by the Congress. It was part of the 2003 law establishing Medicare Part D, which for the first time would pay for medications. It was called the “noninterference provision,” and it prohibited any effort by Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Medicare, with its enormous buying power, was and is required by law to pay whatever the pharmaceutical companies ask for their compounds, period.
One cannot imagine a piece of legislation more harmful to more people, or more nakedly designed to ease the lives and fatten the purses of Big Pharma and its executives.
As a direct result of this legislation, Americans face the highest prices charged for medications anywhere in the world. Take insulin, for example, a drug required by millions of diabetes sufferers. Americans pay more than ten times as much for a unit of insulin as people in 32 comparable countries. Its price went from $21 for a month’s supply in 1986 to $275 in 2019 — a 1200% increase over a time period when inflation totaled 63%.
So far this year, drug companies have raised the prices of 1,100 prescription drugs, the vast majority of the increases being well above the background rate of inflation. Between 2000 and 2018, 35 large drug companies made a total of $1.9 trillion in profits, and spent obscene amounts of money lobbying congress and hammering us with TV ads urging us to lobby our doctors for drugs we’ve never heard of, often for diseases we’ve never heard of. (What the hell is Peyronie’s Disease, for crying out loud?) Lamest pitch I’ve heard so far: not much is known about this disease, but this medication is thought to help. Wow. Price no object there.
Democrats have been trying for 18 years to end this fleecing of our sick and injured fellow citizens, and it was thought by some that, with a Democratic president, and Democrats marginally in control of both houses of congress, this would be the year. But, apparently not. Because Democrats.
In a committee vote earlier this month three Democrats voted with Republicans to kill the reforms on the grounds that it would not be responsible to save American workers $98 billion and American companies $195 billion — and that’s just in premium reductions. The three Democrats have lapped up $1.6 million in campaign donations from drug companies — one of them is the largest beneficiary of drug money in the House.
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kirsten Sinema have also indicated that the only responsible, middle-of-the-road, non-socialist thing to do is to continue to enable Big Pharma to gouge the sick, the elderly and the afflicted. Not parenthetically, Joe Manchin’s daughter Heather Bresh, former CEO of the drug maker Mylan, is accused in Federal court of artificially inflating the price of her company’s Epipen — an injectable antidote for overdoses and allergic reactions widely used by first responders. This summer Mylan closed a drug factory in West Virginia, eliminating 1,400 jobs.
These are the people that the Congress in 2003 acted to shield from competition and inconvenience, at the expense of the people the Congress is supposed to be shielding from uncontrolled greed and overbearing power.
So for the Congress as a whole, and especially for the Democrats in congress who are losing their grip on this issue just when, united, they could have solved it, and most particularly for Joe Manchin, I have one question: have you no shame?
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We have Kaiser Permanente through my employer; Kaiser charges very little for prescription medications, and has modest co-pays for office visits and procedures. But Kaiser is an outlier in the U.S. world of for-profit sick-care corporations. If this country e-v-e-r gets a decent national health-care system, it should look something like Kaiser. But that’s in the fat-chance don’t-hold-your-breath department…
if you think the democrats want to give the poors healthcare in any shape or form, let alone affordable healthcare, you have not been paying attention. oh, and the other guys, not so much either.
Bill Maher would argue that one of the main problems with our health care system is poor health. Americans are overstuffed with supersizes of lousy food. Add to this, rampant drug dependence – much of it prescribed – and you’ve got a huge (no pun intended) block of voters who would rather not be ‘fat shamed’ by their political leaders. Obesity has become the dominant political third rail of our era.
On a personal note, I’ve been designing and printing t-shirts since 1972. Then, we printed sizes small thru XL. 2XL was available on the regular market in only a few colors: white and athletic gray usually. As the 80s moved along, 2XL began being sold in most colors and 3XL gained limited admittance into the general market. 4XL showed up by the turn of the century, and by 2010 or so, a rainbow of colored t-shirts were the norm all the way up to 5XL. Now, select colors have shown up at the wholesale houses sized at 6XL…I have yet to order any of these but it’s only a matter of time.
Along with this, the basic definition of size has changed over time; A medium T-shirt of the 70s would be labeled a small today. Additionally, t-shirt printing machines have had to be beefed-up to handle the larger prints that XL+ sizes require.
All of this demands extra money and resources…And this is only one industry!
Hi Tom,
3rd paragraph, 3rd sentence: ´´ Americans pay more than ten times as much for a unit of insulin as people in 32 comparable companies.´´
I suppose you meant ´´countries´´? Good freudian slip, though !
greetings
Frank
Good catch, Frank. Thanks.
“Democrats have been trying for 18 years to end this fleecing of our sick and injured fellow citizens … ”
Have they? It seems to me that whenever the Democrats have a super-majority they never fail to produce the exact amount of negative votes necessary to not get something done.
And if all else fails, the Parliamentarian, whomever or whatever that is, arrives just in the nick-of-time to say sorry good people of the center-right, procedural inaccuracy, no can do.
The bottom-line is, if Biden wanted to, he could create Medicare-for-All with the stroke of pen. But he won’t.
Because it’s all Kabuki. I don’t know what else to say. Brilliant and opulent* Kabuki Theater to mask the harmonious bi-partisanship taking place at all times in the Palace de Capitol.
93% of Democratic voters are in favor of Medicare-for-All. Even more remarkable, in fact if you’re a person of a certain age a f*cking mindblowing stat if ever there was one, despite having been bombarded by anti-commie propaganda all their right-wing lives, 57% of Republican voters are now also … in favor.
I dare someone to challenge the notion that there has ever been a more unrepresentative government in the history of representative governments than there is right now in the United States of America.
*Did you see the ultra-far left Socialist radical AOC’s gown at the recent star studded Beltway gala? Wowsers. What a stunner! Even more stunning, was how many masked attendants were needed to carry her magnificent train.