Howard “The Scream” Dean has always been busy working at odds with the best interests of Americans, and his latest oped is no exception. You’ll be shocked to learn he’s out here pushing Big Pharma talking points so he can oppose the Trump agenda. Not the Dream Team, the Scream Team.
And there’ll be plenty of screaming if he succeeds in hepling them.
President Trump has been talking and talking and talking about affordability in America, and that’s exactly what he should be doing. And doing something about. When bad government puts you in a sinking ship, it’s not Big Government to make it undo itself — and no ship ever sank the way the Biden Titanic got us headed.
Look at the latest healthcare polling Axios reported about recently. The new West Health-Gallup survey of nearly 20,000 Americans has some staggering implications. Namely, that seventy million Americans say they’ve had to delaye surgery or medical treatment due to the exorbitant expense of medical care in this Obamacare world.
And there’s more: Forty-six million put off changing jobs. Forty million scrapped plans for more education. Thirty-seven million gave up on buying a home. All of it, ultimately, the result of these health costs. So, people aren’t just skipping doctor visits, they’re upending their entire lives around what Big Pharma and the healthcare industry have done to them. To us.
And here’s the part that should make your blood boil: even people with insurance, even people earning $180k or more a year (lucky ducks), are getting crushed (okay not THAT lucky). One in three Americans took out loans just in the last 12 months just to pay for care or medicine. That’s a breakdown in our system, brought on by bad actors above, not by failures of those of down here at the little end.
And people like Howard Dean, with the gall to portray himself as decrying greed, is aiding and abetting Big Pharma’s big plan to make it all even worse.
After losing in court over Medicare’s drug price negotiation powers, the pharmaceutical industry is now targeting the federal 340B program with everything they’ve got. We’ve talked about this before. A lot of people don’t know what it is or think it’s something it isn’t. But the bottom line on it is that it doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime and helps make medical services and prescription meds somthing actually attainable in rural and small town areas that otherwise are undersevered. But drug companies have to accept lower profit margins on a portion of their sales for it. And Dean ain’t for that.
Instead, he seriously blames doctors and nurses. I’m not kidding.
Pharma’s latest move is the so-called 340B ACCESS Act, which would drastically cut eligibility for the program. The American Hospital Association estimates 75% of current metropolitan 340B hospitals would no longer qualify. Fewer eligible hospitals mean fewer people getting their prescriptions, and drug companies charging full retail price for drugs they’re currently required to discount. That’s not reform; it’s a money grab.
Where’s that scream now, Howard?
Congress isn’t really getting this done and drug companies are lobbying hard to dismantle the last remaining rules that correct for terrible past governmental mistakes and make getting medical care actually accessible for hard-working, middle-class Americans.
Those poll numbers tell a story and it’s one that Rich Men North of Richmond ought to be listening to. That just seems to keep happening doesn’t it?