Before its monumental collapse, Fannie Mae lobbyists went into Democratic offices to discuss the importance of investing in minority communities to expand home ownership. At the same time, however, they also knocked on Republican doors, presenting studies showing that the number one factor in whether someone was a Republican was whether they owned a home. These GOP offices took their bait, working with the left to subsidize home ownership, ultimately causing the most significant economic collapse since the Great Depression.
Today, leftist Big Pharma is the one carrying this torch — carefully framing its issues and alliances to shield itself from real GOP scrutiny. Republicans should be aware that no matter what it says or how it frames things, the drugmakers are talking from both sides of their mouth in a desperate attempt to convince more of them to bring more government-regulated and controlled healthcare to the United States.
In 2009, Americans were skeptical when President Obama presented his plan to radically transform healthcare insurance by expanding the government’s role in the marketplace. Opposition was fierce, culminating in a landslide sweep for Republicans in the 2010 congressional elections. Nevertheless, Obama and his allies managed to overcome significant opposition to his plan by cutting a deal with the pharmaceutical industry, which spent $150 million to promote the plan.
Today, American families are paying significantly more for health insurance as a result, and the taxpayers are on the hook for billions more. Now, however, these same anti-free market actors are spending millions to convince Republicans to support a Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)-sponsored effort to ensure drug prices remain as high as ever.
That’s right: PhRMA is now engaged in a deceptive campaign to ensure that pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), not pharmaceutical companies, are responsible for high drug prices and that the government should use its power to regulate them as much as they can.
PBMs are the companies that governments, insurers, and employers hire to negotiate the cost of drugs down. President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers head found they save consumers billions every year.
That is why they have become the best noir of the drug companies — because they help consumers while hurting Big PhRMA’s profitability. Naturally, Sen. Sanders had no qualms with lending them a helping hand by introducing a PBM regulatory bill.
But now, PhRMA and its lobbyists are showering Republicans with pleas for help, telling them that PBMs are too big and that they need to break them up for the sake of the free market. They, of course, leave out that the drug companies themselves are the ones that have really grown too big and that the American people need big entities with power of their own to go head-to-head with them.
Unfortunately, some Republicans have fallen victim to Big PhRMA’s misinformation campaign and have signed onto Sen. Sanders’ legislation co-sponsors. They seem to forget these drugmakers are the same companies that pushed Obamacare and went to ruthless depths to push its COVID-19 vaccines with liberal politicians while gagging, stifling, and even censoring the opposition, which House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) recently exposed through obtaining leaked documents.
Encouragingly, some Republicans, such as Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY) have seen this Big Pharma effort for what it is: a sheep in wolf’s clothing lobbying push by far-left interests.
Hopefully, the considerable influence they wield in the upper chamber is enough to convince their GOP colleagues of this truism. Because the last thing a struggling America needs is vulnerable citizens being choked out by yet another leg in the stool of socialized medicine stepping on their throats.
Julio Rivera is a business and political strategist, and a political commentator and columnist. His writing, which is focused on cybersecurity, economics, and politics, is regularly published by many of the largest news organizations in the world.
