Considering that the country is in political crisis unseen in any of our lifetimes, it seems a little strange that the top issue being discussed among many in the media is a rehash of the story that people around former President Biden allegedly covered up that he aged demonstrably in office since we all saw that with our own eyes. Seeing as this issue will almost certainly never happen again and has no relevance for the future, it is odd that we are spending so much bandwidth discussing what feels like ancient history amid an overwhelming tsunami of critical political news.
I’m not particularly interested in the story, but for those who are, enjoy. However, I have been hearing a lot of the people who are obsessing over it repeat a devastating quote from the first debate, one which may have sealed Biden’s fate. In his closing argument, Biden stumbled and inexplicably said, “We beat Medicare!” It was obviously bizarre, but in context, it was clear that he meant “we beat Pharma.”
I thought of that when I heard our almost 79-year-old current president say this on his recent overseas trip:
Coincidentally, that weird comment actually referred to Big Pharma as well. It seems to be a common glitch among geriatric presidents. As it happens, both men were right — but in Trump’s case, not in the way he thought he was.
Biden was referring to the provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that allowed Medicare, for the first time, to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies to lower prices for some of the most commonly prescribed medications. They succeeded in substantially lowering the price of some commonly prescribed drugs for diabetes and heart disease and were going forward with others. So far, Trump has left that in place — but he did roll back a number of other initiatives that had just started to roll out as soon as he took office.
In that speech in Saudi Arabia, for example, he was boasted about his executive order directing the big international pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices to those paid by other countries or else. His order, as with everything else he’s doing, will be met with a flood of litigation that could take years to work out. Who knows if anything will ever come of it.
But Trump saying “we’ve cut our healthcare by 50-90%” may actually be true, although as usual, he fudged the numbers. If the provisions in the so-called one big beautiful bill Republicans in the House just passed actually ma
