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Big Pharma has teamed up with leftist politicians to push a scheme that would further insert government into health care (a win for the socialist left) and hand Big Pharma even greater pricing power to set even more out-of-control prices and higher profits (a boon for the price-gougers). They are targeting free market forces pharmacy benefit managers’ (PBMs) leverage to deliver savings for American businesses and patients. Their ploy would bail out Big Pharma at the expense of hardworking taxpayers, patients and families — and supercharge the Left’s drive toward a socialist takeover of health care.
Luckily, there are staunch conservatives in Congress who are willing to stand up against the Left’s scheme to push a universal health care system and side with taxpayers, businesses and the American people. Rather than taking Big Pharma’s bait like the Democrats on this issue, representatives such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have remained steadfast in their position saying, “We’ve paid Big Pharma enough money for COVID vaccines. Republicans should be focused on cutting spending, especially with the DOJ’s weaponization against President Trump, and launching an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden’s corruption. We don’t have time to push Big Pharma and Dr. Fauci’s priorities.”
A recent Washington Examiner piece exposed how passing measures targeting pharmacy benefit companies could actually hurt Republicans in the 2024 election cycle. A GOP Senate campaign staffer cautioned, “Not a single Republican voter is asking the House to pass a PBM bill. This is driven by pharma lobbyists, it’s bad politics and policy, and it will hurt us next fall.”
The proposals in question not only have severe political ramifications for conservative policymakers, but also come with a disastrous price tag. One policy aimed at banning market-based incentives for PBMs in negotiating with drug companies to secure rebates would increase federal spending in the Medicare Part D program $3 to $10 billion annually according to University of Chicago Professor of Economics Casey Mulligan, Ph.D.
Similar “delinking” measures have raised concerns of experts, policymakers and community leaders.
Joe Grogan, former domestic policy adviser under former President Trump, slammed “delinking” policies:
Unfortunately, Congressional eagerness to destroy this contractual arrangement punishes patients and taxpayers far more than it would punish PBMs. In a post-delinking world, the PBM would be paid the same amount for each dispensation of the same type of drug, or a single flat fee for all their services, decreasing incentives to negotiate deep discounts … Worse, employers would have fewer tools to deal with underperforming PBMs without performance-based pricing, their only recourse to switch PBMs with the expiration of a contract.
Additionally, delinking will impose costs on patients. A decrease in the size of negotiated rebates caused by the removal of incentives means plan premiums would increase by as much as $10 billion a year for seniors, causing patients to purchase less coverage and limit use of other services, with knock-on health effects increasing spending by as much as $600 million.
It’s not just policymakers and policy experts expressing deep concerns with legislation targeting pharmacy benefits, but also leaders in our communities, including small business owners, are seeing right through the Left and Big Pharma’s agenda.
Alabama Probate Judge Ryan Robertson warned:
Instead of making things easier for patients and business owners, certain Members of Congress, including Medicare-for-All advocates Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are pushing policies that undermine the flexibility employers rely on by limiting choices and increasing prescription drug costs. They aim to do this with new government mandates that allow the government to dictate what happens in the prescription drug market.
Business owner and former Mississippi State Senator Merle Flowers urged lawmakers to oppose new government mandates:
The best way to effectively reduce prescription drug spending, or any costs for that matter, is by encouraging more competition in the market and strengthening free market forces. Allowing the government to restrict, ban and dismantle the tools that pharmacy benefit companies use to apply downward pressure on prescription drug costs will be detrimental to patients, families and taxpayers, but also to our free society as a whole… Now more than ever, our conservative lawmakers in Congress need to re-prioritize their focus to ensuring the Left doesn’t get their way and transform our nation into a government-controlled socialist society, and they can start by rejecting policies targeting pharmacy benefit companies.
The policies in question would actually hand Big Pharma a whopping $32 billion in increased drug profits every year if Congress were to “delink” PBM compensation in the Medicare Part D and commercial insurance markets. This huge financial windfall for Big Pharma explains why they are pushing lawmakers to advance such a policy. Meanwhile, the prospect for a major expansion of the government’s role in our health care system to undermine free market principles explains why Democrats are so eager to push Pharma’s priorities. Members of the GOP are the only line of defense against these misguided proposals masked as solutions to better serve the American people.
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