Warning About Biden’s Push Toward Socialized Medicine

Christopher Arps writes at RedState.com about a little-reported element of the Biden administration’s healthcare policy.

This week, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board provided a megaphone to what I’ve been asking for months: Is the Biden administration making excuses to regulate (or outright eliminate) pro-consumer healthcare groups just to bring us a step closer to socialized medicine?

On Sept. 20, Lina Khan and the Biden Federal Trade Commission did Big Pharma a solid by bringing a complaint against pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), groups that plenty of government agencies and private sector employers hire to challenge the drug companies into lowering their prices.

PBMs are specialists in managing health plans and pulling every trick in the book to strong-arm Big Pharma into lowering drug costs. They are so effective that every business wants to use them. Over 275 million Americans are now part of health plans that PBMs administer.It’s no coincidence that the money-hungry companies under the Big Pharma umbrella have been spending billions of dollars in a push to have Washington lawmakers weaponize the regulatory state against these companies. Like The Wall Street Journal wrote this week, “You have to smile at Ms. Khan portraying big drug makers as victims in her suit.”

The crux of the Biden FTC’s suit is that PBMs have been “artificially inflating insulin prices” by bullying insulin companies into giving them rebates in exchange for ensuring their drugs get used more frequently.

But facts are stubborn things — and the facts show the exact opposite of what the FTC is contending.

The Wall Street Journal found that. “… average insulin out-of-pocket costs fell to $21.19 from $31.52 between 2018 and 2022,” and “nearly 80% of insulin prescriptions cost less than $35 a month out of pocket in 2022.” So, in no way are PBMs inflating consumer costs. 

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