If you are old enough to remember or know how to ask the internet, Democrats have been pretending to care about the cost of health care since Mrs. Bill Clinton hit the West Wing with a left hook. Hillary Care was a groundbreaking piece of First Lady-inspired “legislation” to give the government more control over your body by entangling health care in a few dozen more tentacles.
It failed miserably but did not dissuade busybody Hildabeast from a lengthy career in politics, with the goal of wrecking things (it’s required if you are to run for anything as a Democrat).
Obamacare promised not to get between you and your doctor, not death panels, more access, and the systemic lowering of the cost of care. They lied too. It was always about the government finding a way to control you by controlling the cost and access to health care. It made politicians, lobbyists, and the Public Health Industrial Complex triad even richer (Hospitals, Big Pharma, and Big Insurance).
Not to cut my already too-long preamble short, but Dems have been promising to make this or that cheaper forever, and it almost always gets more expensive. (Carter did some good things with the cost of airfare, trucking, and rail in the 70’s, but that’s about it). My point being, Dems were trying to do to health care what they’ve done to energy, food, cars and trucks, gas cans, appliances, living; regulate it into a luxury.
Mr. Trump, on the other hand, has worked diligently to fix what Dems broke, including on the question of health care. It’s a large nut that throws around a lot of money to avoid getting cracked, but within months, Trump had a plan, and it just launched.
Dems are so mad they can’t even figure out how to be outraged. No middlemen. No lobbyists, no massively ill-functioning government-run website requiring thousands of employees to de-bug and maintain. No special chief of prescription website services for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion or the political emissions of its massive Them/They staff.
Uncharacteristically promptly at 7pm last night, President Trump announced the launch of the new direct-buy TrumpRx website, which currently offers rock-bottom cash prices for around 40 of the most popular drugs in America, including Wegovy diet drugs and fertility medicine. The President said that (1) the site offers consumers lower prices than found in any other country, and (2) the offering would expand over time.
The website is dead simple. Pick a drug. The site either redirects you to the manufacturer’s new portal (skipping the middlemen) or spits out a pharmacy coupon. Easy peasy, nothing for the government to manage, and best of all— no tax dollars spent.
The New York Times is reported to have been underwhelmed, saying it’s not all that or a bag of chips. But it is. It’s simple, clean, and uncomplicated. Government-school “graduates” could figure it out without first searching for a YouTube tutorial. And it represents a thing that has the Times and the make-everything-a-luxury proglodytes even more concerned. Access outside the broken, rigged, pricey, byzantine system that makes them relevant.
TrumpRx is the first major step in remaking the American healthcare system. Whether someone has insurance or not isn’t the point. You don’t need insurance, or at least, not comprehensive insurance, if you can easily and cheaply buy the healthcare products that you want and need.
It looks to me like the Trump Team is building out a parallel system before tinkering with people’s Obamacare. The President is also completely shifting the economics of the pharmaceutical industry.
Yes, the “government” set up the website, and yes, there are a lot of drugs that need to end up there, but it’s an impressive low-profile start, and it bodes well for bigger “smaller” things to come. Imagine, if you will, a federal deregulatory push in favor of cash-for-service health care outside the public health cartel triad? it exits, but struggles. Trump and Republicans could change that.
Family doctors who are not tied to the Hospitals that set their prices and make them make you wear masks or have to pitch all those extra tests and extra billing line items the Dems used to justify their Obamacare mess.
A deregulatory insurrection, if you like, that opens insurance markets and makes low-cost drugs available without an Amazon Prime membership and all the extra interference from massive bureaucracies that ought to be relegated to policing actual misfeasance or malfeasance in that or any industry, and then, only when asked.
I’ll put the virtual crack pipe down now, but it is possible, but not in nine months. It will take time and requires a minority Democratic party in Congress for the indefinite future.
Hint-hint.
