Beware Congress’ Latest Big Pharma Enrichment Scheme

 It plans to drive Americans’ medication prices up to fill its own pockets.

Why is Congress continuing to help Big Pharma avoid accountability and suck every penny it can from Main Street?

 

From July 2021 to July 2022, major pharmaceutical companies inflated the prices of over 1,000 drug products by over 31 percent — and some by over 500 percent. Things aren’t getting any better: Over 1,000 drugs have already seen an increase in cost this year. It has gotten to the point where some American families must choose between putting food on the table or taking their medications.

But Congress doesn’t care.

Hidden No More

Congress continues doing Big Pharma’s bidding because it knows that pharmaceutical companies will always butter their bread. In fact, a STAT News study found that two-thirds of Congress cashed pharma campaign checks.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Congress granted these companies immunity from COVID lawsuits, arguing that removing the fear of litigation would allow pharma companies to produce quicker innovative solutions to the COVID pandemic. But we all know how well that brilliant idea turned out. It just allowed these mega-corporations to make windfall profits while short-circuiting standard vaccine safety protocols.

Some members of Congress even tried (unsuccessfully) to stop the Inflation Reduction Act, which penalizes Big Pharma every time its Medicare drug prices rise faster than the inflation rate — because preventing market manipulation in life-or-death situations is apparently against free-market principles in their version of America. (READ MORE: Not Your Standard Exit Interview)

But while the lengths members of Congress have gone to in carrying Big Pharma’s water have always been disgusting, they used to pretend their bailout attempts overlapped with a free-market worldview. From railing against trial lawyers to arguing about the fallacy of price controls, they at least tried to argue that their pro-pharma legislative efforts coincided with the principles of limited government and free enterprise.

Now, however, these same “preserve the free market at all costs” posers are unapologetically exposing themselves as the bought-and-paid-for shills they are. They do so by calling for regulations — the weaponization of government force — against the private companies that big pharmaceutical companies don’t like, an indefensible act for purported supporters of limited government.

New Bill Won’t Lower Prescription Costs

This month, these hypocritical members of Congress introduced a bill that would make it harder for groups called “pharmacy benefit managers” (PBMs) to administer the American people’s Medicare Part D health plans. Why did they do this? It’s simple: Big Pharma hates that PBMs, the groups that the sponsors of America’s health plan pay to hold drug companies accountable, push their prices down.

In 2019, the Government Accountability Office studied PBMs’ role in Medicare Part D and found that they passed nearly all the rebates they secured onto the plan sponsors, offsetting the program’s spending by a whopping $29 billion (20 percent). That’s $29 billion shifted away from the drug industry and saved by American consumers and taxpayers. So it’s only logical that members of Congress would now seek to make it more difficult for PBMs to administer Medicare Part D. While these groups are saving these members’ constituents millions, PBMs are affecting the bottom line of one of their top campaign contributors, and that’s what’s important to them.

Make no mistake: Protecting their campaign coffers is all that has and continues to matter to Congress in these Big Pharma legislative fights, from taking their side on COVID immunity and above-inflation price-gouging to this. While our representatives used to argue that they were safeguarding market principles, these same lawmakers have now resorted to weaponizing the regulatory state against Big Pharma’s opposition — and there’s nothing free-market about that.

Some shining lights in Congress are opposing this crony legislative shell game. They include Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Tommy Tuberville. Hopefully, their advocacy efforts pay off and result in these big-government power grabs getting regulated into the cloakroom waste bucket where they belong. We’d all be better off.

https://spectator.org/beware-congress-latest-big-pharma-enrichment-scheme/

https://spectator.org/did-a-mentally-challenged-teenager-just-become-the-victim-of-an-fbi-entrapment-scheme/