Republicans have long championed economic issues like lower taxes, free trade, and deregulation because it was the right thing to do for the most people. Our policies grew the economy in the 80s and 90s, created the Internet, and brought more peace and stability to the planet than ever before.
Everyone has benefited from conservative economic principles, but increasingly it appears that those in Corporate America who have benefited the most have shown us the least gratitude. Manufacturers sent factories to China, feeding its military ambitions. Big Tech is hellbent on destroying us, even though we created them.
Perhaps the worst offender of all is Big Pharma: They destroyed our economy, freedoms, and entire way of life during the “pandemic” – all so they could become billionaires off of COVID. Before that, some of them kicked off a raging opioid crisis that especially hit red, working-class areas hard.
Now, Big Pharma is attacking a federal drug discount program in the courts, online, and in Congress. Created in 1992, the 340B program has successfully reduced outpatient costs, kept health care providers open across rural America, and reduced what many Americans pay for lifesaving medications, including HIV and AIDS treatments, which many of them need because of the opioid crisis. It works by requiring that drug manufacturers discount prices for medication sold to covered entities. Those are hospitals and clinics that serve a certain threshold of Medicaid patients. It’s the government using free market and “Art of the Deal”-style principles as leverage for a better deal: if the Pharma company wants to bill Medicaid for drugs it sells to patients, it has to offer the required discounts.
But those Big Pharma executives – many of whom destroyed our lives with the opioid crisis and during COVID – really don’t like giving out those discounts, so they’re trying to dismantle 340B. Unfortunately, some are falling for it.
The prime suspect here is Never Trump favorite Sen. Bill Cassidy. He has long sided with Pharma on the program, and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), which he chairs, held a hearing on 340B last Thursday. Ahead of that meeting, Big Pharma blanketed Washington, D.C., with messaging about how 340B is being “exploited” to give free health care for illegal immigrants and greedy doctors mutilating children brainwashed with transgender dogma (ah, excuse me “gender-affirming care.”) It’s clever messaging, but it overlooks Big Pharma’s primary, and profit-driven role, on the wrong side of every cultural debate currently playing out in America.
The fact is, Big Pharma is the one creating, marketing, and profiting from the drugs that trans the kids. The more trans kids, the more puberty blockers, estrogen and testosterone they sell.
The transgenderism industrial complex is massively profitable, with total revenues in 2023 at almost $4.5 billion. Exact figures for hormone therapies are hard to isolate because many drugs used for chemical mutilation have other legitimate purposes. For example, Lupron is used both as a puberty blocker and to fight prostate cancer. Big Pharma will use the same medicine that saves some lives to ruin others.
Big Pharma has also been offering bountiful discounts of its very own to illegals and running its own “illegal immigration magnet” programs. A customer is a customer, regardless of which passport they carry or whether it contains a visa or not. Pfizer, AbbVie and Gilead, and GlaxoSmithKline—all of whom hate 340B—have been running the corporate drug dealer equivalent of “the first one’s free” discounts medication schemes for illegal immigrants for years now.
By contrast, hospitals are legally obligated to provide care to anyone who walks through the emergency room doors—whether they are American citizens or illegals. In addition, providers in blue states are often legally required to assist with gender transitions—the Supreme Court literally just heard a case about Colorado’s “forced transition” law. Over 20 states have laws like this, which means 340B providers, unfortunately, will be involved—whether they like it or not.
Patients who benefit from 340B largely are lower-income, rural populations, that is to say, working-class Americans who switched parties for Donald Trump in 2016. If it weren’t for these people, traditional Republicans would have nominated Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton would have been president for eight years.
We can’t let Big Pharma throw these people under the proverbial bus because they’d rather fatten their profits even more and distract from their real record and the real source of problems.
Rural healthcare is in a dangerous place. Since 2005, 195 rural hospitals have closed, while another 65 have undergone “converted closures,” where services have been massively reduced or eliminated entirely. Of those still functioning, it’s estimated that 40 percent (!) are in danger of closing.
The bottom line is, if Big Pharma is so concerned about “gender-affirming” drugs, they could – gasp – stop selling them. If they’re worried about illegal immigration, they could quit acting as a magnet for it.
So maybe it’s time to stop listening to them. Let’s not fall for Big Pharma’s latest trick.