Did Trump embrace … Socialized Medicine?
The Trump administration laid out a plan Wednesday to fulfill President Trump’s long-standing vow to lower prescription drug prices by allowing states, drug wholesalers and pharmacies to import some cheaper drugs from Canada. But officials could not say when the plan might go into effect, and many questions about its possible scope remain unanswered.
- Trump administration unveils plan to allow states to buy cheaper drugs from Canada - Washington Post
By JM Hamilton (12-25-2019)
A very ecumenical Happy Holidays!
What little remains of the US free market system continues to fail the bottom half of Americans, since the power elite no longer embrace capitalism or competition, but rather, rent seeking cartels and monopolies. It’s a continuing theme in many JMH editorials, the dark underbelly of the American Nightmare (once upon a time, the American Dream).
Witness the blowup of the Boeing monopoly this week and the long overdue removal of said company’s CEO. My guess is Boeing’s troubles are just beginning, and that it will take a great deal more than the removal of one man before Boeing turns it around. Could it possibly be that Boeing stockholders would be better served by a corporate breakup – the parts of the company being worth more than the present toxic combination? Diseconomies of scale defined: Boeing.
Enough of Boeing… for there is no sector of the economy that takes up a bigger chunk of GDP (18 to 20%), where reckless greed runs unharnessed and soaks up more of America’s disposable income, or the lack thereof, than US healthcare.
That US healthcare is a disaster w/ ever spiraling costs, premiums, co-pays, deductibles – and often, resulting unpayable debt - has been very well documented. Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote an excellent piece in the Post demonstrating the destructive force this industry - Big Pharma & Healthcare - has become, not only for a plurality of Americans, but for the US economy as a whole. Afterall, when one predatory monopoly – say Big Pharma - skewers so many Americans, this means less disposable income to be spent on alternative goods and services. In short, due to a predatory healthcare sector, the balance of the US economy suffers, as aggregate demand is diminished (that is, consumed by healthcare monopolists).
And rising healthcare & big pharma costs have been utilized as an excuse, by employers, to keep employee wages constricted, despite the fact that employees are shouldering a greater part of the healthcare burden (via the aforementioned escalation in co-pays, deductibles, debt, & increased premiums). All at a time, when many companies are minting record profits and are engaged in stock buybacks
POTUS Trump, back in 2016, promised he’d rein in the Big Pharma killers (aka murderers). He also committed to running off the right-wing designed ACA (aka Romneycare; aka Obamacare), which has been an abject failure in containing and controlling medical costs, and replace it w/ something far, far better.
All that changed on December 18th when the Washington Post reported that POTUS Trump – on the very same day he was impeached – rolled out a proposal to allow Americans and states to import drugs from Canada. You know, our socialized medicine neighbor to the North. (But who am I kidding, all of America’s Western Democractic allies have some version of universal healthcare. The US, apparently, is the only nation whose elites are greedy enough, so as to allow healthcare cartels, monopolies, special interests, and predatory private equity firms to run roughshod over ordinary citizens.)
Trump’s proposal to use Canada & socialized medicine to bailout Americans - out of our Big Pharma fever dream - also tells us a great deal about: the failure of Congress to do its job in regulating - and funding appropriately the regulation of – big pharma markets; regulatory capture, itself; the corruption of the Congress (both centrist Dems and GOP), owned by healthcare special interests; the power of healthcare oligopolies; the collapse of American capitalism… and raises questions as to why the US healthcare crisis has been allowed to go unchecked for so long.
That Trump had to turn to our socialized medicine neighbor, Canada, for a pharmaceutical solution speaks directly to US business & political leadership’s incapacity to solve real problems. Canada does have the ability and courage to say “no” to Big Pharma and places caps on pharma costs and price gouging, so as to protect its citizens. US business & political leadership presently does not exhibit the same courage or will.
Canada – w/ about a tenth of the US population – can’t supply Americans with medicine, and so Trump’s proposal is likely DOA. What Canada can offer, however, is a successful socialized medicine alternative to America’s failed private sector healthcare model. A US healthcare model that no country in the world is seeking to emulate.
In markets that are exceptionally profitable - read healthcare - many entrants into the marketplace would keep medical costs in check, at least that’s what should happen in a healthy free market economy. But when companies refuse to compete and this in turn, threatens the lives of ordinary Americans - who must either sacrifice lifesaving care or go deep into drowning debt – the government has an obligation to heavily regulate healthcare utilities, cap excessive profit taking, and in some instances, directly compete with cartels and monopolies (see Medicare for All).
In dealing w/ America’s Big Pharma catastrophe, how ironic that Trump reached for a solution that is the embodiment of socialized medicine, Canada, to come to America’s rescue. Liberals always knew the GOP loved socialism; but up until now, the Republican version of socialism focused on the redistribution of wealth to the 1%.
Now for the multi-trillion dollar question: Will centrist Dems exhibit the same courage, as that exhibited by POTUS Trump (and begin to take on the mass murderers that make up Big Pharma)? Don't hold your breath.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2019
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