Vanilla without the Bean

Donald “the Mouth” Trump is at it again. Raging against big business, castigating unfair pricing practices – pandering to his “we don’t look past the slogans” constituents – but effectively towing the party line in unquestioning support of big business. Not to mention a terrible habit of drug companies that take reasonably-priced drugs and jack those older prices several thousand times higher… just because they can.

This time, Mr. Trump’s May 11^th Rose Garden speech focused on his campaign promise to rein in the cost of prescription drugs, a relatively easy challenge. All that really needs to happen is to allow the federal government and the ACA-enabled healthcare exchanges the right to negotiate such prices directly with the pharmaceutical giants instead of the existing legal mandate to pay full retail without question. The logical approach. The way most of the rest of the world does it. Nope. Trump dished out his same-old, same-old. Words without any substance. A study to reveal what everyone already knows with absolute certainty.

“[Trump’s] blueprint includes a series of proposals that the Trump administration says it will study or evaluate, such as possibly requiring pharmaceutical makers to list drug prices in television ads or giving Medicare Part D drug plans more leeway to adjust which drugs they cover.

“Even Trump’s tough talk about going after other nations that negotiate lower prices for their citizens — which the president labeled ‘freeloading’ — was accompanied only by instructions to his negotiators to raise the issue in talks with U.S. trading partners.

“The president has faced mounting pressure to confront the skyrocketing prices of prescription drugs, which have become a key driver of rising healthcare costs and a major complaint for millions of American patients.

“The federal government projects that spending on retail drugs will increase by 6.3% a year on average over the next decade, outpacing inflation and income growth.

“The U.S. already has the highest medical prices in the world, research indicates.

“Nearly three-quarters of registered voters said in a recent nationwide poll that they would be more likely to back a congressional candidate this fall who supports bringing down the cost of prescription medications.

“That makes drug prices the most pressing healthcare issue in voters’ minds, the poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found.” Los Angeles Times, May 12^th.

But implementing the obvious price-cutting policy would fly in the face of Trump/GOP-fomented unneeded tax cuts for the rich, eliminating life sustaining pollution controls because big business doesn’t want to pay for them, and ripping away consumer protection and financial regulation because the little guy is expendable when corporate profits are concerned. Surely Donald Trump does not want to drop pharma profits by one red cent. And his proposals accomplish maintaining the status quo without a sliver of genuine change.

How did the stock market react to Trump’s “blueprint”? “And though Trump used sweeping rhetoric to attack drug makers, insurers and others he said were fleecing patients, his plan committed to few concrete actions that would immediately challenge the industry… After Trump announced his plan from the White House Rose Garden, pharmaceutical stocks jumped.

‘‘What Trump laid out is policy that Big Pharma can love,’ said Robert Weissman, president of the advocacy group Public Citizen. ‘Trump abandoned his campaign commitment to Medicare Part D negotiation … and shamefully aims to beat up on other countries to make them pay more.’” LA Times. Pharma stocks jumped! They loved the Donald’s non-plan!

As the GOP slowly erodes the now-popular Affordable Care Act, as medical bankruptcies and rising deaths and disabilities mount where people cannot afford treatment, millions of people are suffering from this official GOP policy to cut social programs and reduce access to affordable healthcare. Oddly enough, Trump’s apparently morally blind and most hypocritical evangelical base appear to be those most significantly slammed by this callous failure to provide promised “better” healthcare. In many cases what is available (so-called “skinny” plans) no longer cover preexisting or most serious conditions. Healthcare costs for those who can afford it least are rising… to the point where getting sick and dying without health insurance is a common individual backup plan.

What we have today is a combination of the most reviled form of adhocracy (merely reactive governance) married to plutocracy (governance by and for the rich elite). We have a morally bankrupt, polarizing, mega-corrupt and most ignorant administration leading the nation with chaos theory and presenting old, worn-out and clearly disproven economic theories (like trickle-down economics which has never worked) that embolden the rich to ask for more. It’s time to show the voting public that the vast, vast majority of us are vastly, vastly worse off with this leadership… and to show the Trump supporters in Congress the gate in November.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the American public got what they voted for, with a little help from gerrymandering and voter manipulation!