Bernie Sanders, Al Franken and Sherrod Brown Quietly Owned Trump On High Drug Prices

WASHINGTON ― The pharmaceutical industry consistently ranks as the most hated sector of the economy. It is also the most profitable. This is not a coincidence: Sick people need medicine to live, and drug companies charge ludicrous prices to extract their margins. This puts Big Pharma in a class by itself, even among deeply unpopular companies. People can’t stand dealing with cable providers, but TV doesn’t keep anyone above ground. At least Walmart has low prices. Drugs are ridiculously expensive for two reasons, both imposed by the federal government. First, the government grants pharmaceutical firms long-term monopolies on prescription medication. Second, the government bans itself from regulating the prices these monopolists choose to charge ― or even allowing Medicare or Medicaid to negotiate with them. No other country in the world does business this way, because it is economically inefficient and bad for public health. President Donald Trump spent much of the 2016 campaign saying as much — vowing to stick it to the drug companies if he was elected. “When it comes time to negotiate the cost of drugs, we are going to negotiate like crazy,” Trump said on the campaign trail. After winning the election, he ratcheted up the rhetoric, telling reporters at a press conference that pharmaceutical companies were “getting away with murder.” Now Democrats are seizing on Trump’s bombast to burnish their own prescription drug creden...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news