Tenchu's Thoughts: We're All Socialists Now
As many have pointed out time and time again, Trump is no capitalist. Instead, he's a populist authoritarian who dresses up as a free market businessman.
So it doesn't come as a surprise to me when Trump basically takes the socialist position on prescription drugs:
Trump signs executive order that aims to slash drug prices by at least 50% (NBC News)
This is almost EXACTLY what the Democrats have been calling for, but the Republicans have opposed because "socialism socialism socialism!!!"
Now that Trump is calling for it, we're going to see revisionist history, even from the mainstream media who won't do their due diligence in fact-checking Trump's firehose of lies. He and his cronies will portray the Democrats as "friends of Big Pharma," and the MAGA cultists will amplify those lies.
(And yes, I'm well aware of the unholy alliance between Big Pharma and both political parties, which MAGA considers to be the so-called "Deep State." The political relationship is as complicated as the field of pharmaceuticals itself, but no one can expect MAGA to understand even grade-school math, much less any issue that exhibits even a token level of complication.)
Will It Work? LOL ...
"But but surely Trump will succeed where the Democrats failed! All Hail The Orange King!"
Yawn, been there, done that, samo samo.
First of all, it's unclear whether Trump even has the authority to control prices at a whim. Not even with the Republican bootlickers in Congress. The proper way, of course, is to get those bootlickers to pass a law, but the infantile Trump won't even do that.
Second, there is a quick and easy way for Big Pharma to comply with the law. They can just charge foreign nations the same high prices that they charge Americans. The result will be foreign nations getting screwed over and Big Pharma losing a marginal amount of revenue. But hey, under a Trumptatorship that's par for the course. (And Trump doesn't even have to take a mulligan here.)
Third, at this point, no one should ever take any of Trump's executive orders at face value anymore. Most likely is that Trump will "make a deal" with Big Pharma, which will involve greasing Trump's tiny little palms and maybe making some concessions regarding domestic drug manufacturing.
Bottom line is that I don't expect Big Pharma to concede to Trump's stated goal of "reducing drug prices by 30-80%." As with everything else Trump does, he is not "holding the cards." Instead, he is trying to do what Democrats tried to do in the past, except less competently.
And he will fail. As usual.
The only thing he will succeed in doing is turn MAGA into Bernie-like socialists.
Tenchusatsu |
